


Indoctrination

by minkmix



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abuse, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-06-26 14:27:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 59,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15665037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkmix/pseuds/minkmix
Summary: Summary: Sequel to Removed - which is here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14454672/chapters/33391542A year later the trio of hunters from 'Removed' make good on their promise to capture Dean again. While Dean struggles to survive the brutal indoctrination into their ranks, he discovers his new bosses need him for more than he thought. Something more deadly than the law is keeping the strange hunters on the run and now the Winchesters might be the only thing that can stop it...





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allthedeangurlz!peril](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=allthedeangurlz%21peril).



The road looked perfect.

“I don’t get those.” Dean did a re-grip on the wheel.

“What’s to get? It’s like an e-mail.”

Dean turned down the radio just a little bit and adjusted his sunglasses.

“I just mean, it’s a phone right? So why not just call it.”

Sam sighed, reading the text display on his cell one more time before shutting it off and shoving it in his pocket.

Dean looked back over at his brother when he got no response.

“What? Bad news?”

“Good news actually.” Sam muttered, settling back into his seat and resting his head. “A friend of mine back at school. He’s getting married. Wants me to come out, you know, for the whole thing.”

“Oh.”

Dean wasn’t sure what to make of landmark celebrations of that kind. He knew what he was supposed to think and feel. If television had taught him anything he had learned when and what to smile at. But a brand new crying baby or a fifteen thousand dollar party in a rented suit didn’t seem like much cause for shooting your guns in the air as it were. He’d had experience with at least one of those things and it wasn’t the mystical dream party that most made it out to be.

And judging Sam’s quiet reaction to potential martial bliss, he was guessing that maybe these events didn’t rank very high with Sam either. Or maybe Sam was feeling that tug back to Palo Alto had turned a little loose. Maybe he wasn’t feeling it at all.

“So?” Dean tried. “You gonna go?”

“I don’t know Dean,” Sam rearranged himself again, his agitation at being unable to cross his legs in the confines of the car, annoying him back into his original place. “I haven’t been back in, what, I don’t even know how long, I just think, I think—“

“I think you should go.” Dean nodded to himself. “Grab a bus in Chicago and just go.”

Sam turned to look at him, uncertainty and worry plain in his eyes.

Dean knew why.

“Think of it as a vacation.” He told him. “We got nothing going on for now, so take a week, fuck, take a couple weeks. Catch up with your old friends, have some fun.”

“I don’t know—“

“Just don’t think so much about it.” Dean said. “I bet your friends sure don’t.”

Sam was quiet.

Dean didn’t say it but he thought they could both use a break. A break from the road and even just from each other. But Sam mostly. It would be good for him to break off for a while and get in touch with that life he had made out there in California. As much as his brother liked to think it had all crumbled to dust after the fire, the foundations were still out there. The reminders like this guy and his wedding proved that well enough.

“I guess I could just catch a bus when we get to Chicago.” Sam recited, his fingers playing with the folded map in his lap.

Dean smiled. “Sounds like a plan."

Sam turned to him. “What are you gonna do?”

Figured Sam would ask. They both suffered from a terminal case of being in each other’s business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Dean knew it would bug Sam if he got enigmatic about it and didn’t tell him where he’d be everyday and when he’d be reachable by phone.

“I gotta call of my own.” Dean sighed.

When he’d checked his voice mail the night before he’d found an unexpected message. It was precise if not a little long, short of details but with a sense of urgency that their kind seemed to use in every tone of voice they owned. It was a guy Dean vaguely remembered meeting with his dad when he was a kid. Out on some ranch with a bunch of cows and horses. But that was about where his memory ran out. Turns out the old hunter was looking for their dad but found Dean instead. Needed a favor he said.

“Thinking about heading down to Oklahoma.”

“Since when?” Sam demanded.

As far as their own plans had gone, they were going to hole up in Chicago for a weekend and just relax by that gigantic lake. At least that had been Dean’s plan. He was sure Sam had something more productive in mind with a city filled with better things to do than sleep.

“Take it easy, I wasn’t going to go but… but now that you have this thing I don’t know, maybe I’ll just drive down there anyway.”

Dean hadn’t really planned on going. In fact he wasn’t even sure he was going to even return the guy’s phone call. But now it felt like a nice distraction. Some milk run down into the eastern forests and maybe the solitude of the state plains out farther west.

“For what? A job?”

He could almost hear Sam already reorganizing everything he had just settled into the schedule that was his brain.

“You can’t go alone on some job—“

“It’s not a job!” Dean stopped him before he really got started. “It’s some old friend of dad’s. Just called for a helping hand. That’s all.”

“Helping hand for what?” Sam asked bluntly, his annoyance rising as his brother stayed vague.

“I don’t know okay?” Dean admitted. “He’s an old guy. Got some kind of farm.”

“It’s a job.” Sam muttered as he slumped back into his seat and trained his gaze out the window.

Dean smiled a little to himself.

He sure hoped it was.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had been a while since he had driven alone.

Not between gas stations and motels or while Sam was sleeping, but really really alone. At first he found himself turning to the empty passenger seat with something to say halfway out of his mouth. Found himself keeping the volume down below where he liked it to avoid complaints. Dean had even kept the bench seat where it just about bothered him just so Sammy’s knees weren’t crushed up against the dashboard.

By the next day he was driving like solo was the only way he’d ever known.

The second day he woke up in a room with one bed and took as long of a shower as he wanted. He ate while he drove, wanting to reach the ranch by sundown. The old guy on the line had been weird about the directions, stopping and starting, correcting himself and resuming with entirely different road names. It had been slightly frustrating but mostly confusing. No wonder this guy needed some help on a job. Dean wasn’t even sure if this guy should even keep a driver’s license based on the short telephone conversation alone.

By the time he’d gotten the directions out of the man he was too flustered to try to communicate anything more complicated. Like why he wanted him to come in the first place. He’d figure that one out soon enough. The headlights hit the battered sign post that read the cattle farm’s name.

Johnson Ranch.

It also had a 20-mile marker on it to warn you just how much farther you had to go. Dean whistled as he pulled onto the bumpy unpaved road. There was a lot of land out here that went for miles and miles with little dots of humanity every now and again. Blink and you’d miss it.

Bouncing in his seat from the weather-worn potholes, he tried to relax for the long rest of his rough ride. He pulled out his phone and flipped it open. Wondering if his phone would even work out here, he gave it a hopeful try. With a smile he heard it pick up right into his voice mail. Sam’s voice was loud and clear. The echoes of a noisy bus station out in California in the background. He was going to hitch to the next town over and then use that credit card they had just got to get something to wear. What did you wear to a wedding anyway? Sam’s laughter at himself was good to hear even if it was just a recording.

I’ll call you tomorrow after the ceremony, I think I’ll be crashing at Beck’s…

Dean watched his headlights bob and sway over the dirt road in the dark. He caught some eye shine off to his left and saw what was probably a deer flash white across the road well ahead of him.

Have fun out there. Sam sarcastically ended his message. Where ever that is.

He clicked his phone off with a grin.

“You too Sam,” He turned the music up a little louder. “You too.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He decided one thing as soon as the front door to the decrepit place creaked open.

Dean didn’t look forward to getting real old. But he comforted himself with the fact that the chances of that were pretty slim anyway. He stepped off the creaking porch with the alien blue glow of the bug light and into the musty old farmhouse.

The old man named Johnson insisted on taking his duffel bag from him even though the man almost doubled over with its weight.

Dean watched him vanish with it, unsure of what to do in the low light of the empty foyer. There were a couple pairs of muddy boots. A large broken umbrella and a small hallway that lead to what looked like one large open room. He wandered into it, looking up at the stuffed and mounted heads of most of the indigenous wildlife of the area. Racks of horns. Bleached animal skulls. The wood log walls were thick with cobwebs and dust, the old leather furniture well worn and peeling apart. There was a large blackened stone fireplace that looked like it was used fairly often.

“I’m glad you came.” An old frail voice said behind him. “You want some coffee? Got some on.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Dean turned and smiled a smile down at the man. “I had about a gallon of it on the road.”

It was a lie but for some reason Dean didn’t want anything made from the water that flowed out of these rusty pipes or was prepared in the dank kitchen. Even in his memory of the joint Dean remembered this man being advanced in years. But he was much more advanced than he recalled. If he had to guess he’d say the old fella was pushing decade number nine. And he looked about as neglected as the house did.

“You out here alone?” He asked as he looked around again.

The old guy shuffled towards a comfortable beat-up looking recliner that was covered in a thick quilt. He laboriously sat himself down into it and waved Dean to have a seat himself.

“My son, he comes once a month.” He smiled a shaky smile. “You know, to check up on the old man.”

Once a month. Dean half smiled back, distracted by the gigantic deer head that loomed over him, its black glossy glass eyes staring into nothing. It smelled like the skins in here. From the cracked old furniture to the animal remains that hung proudly on every available surface, it smelled like something had settled down and died.

“So?” Dean thought it would be good to get to the point, the urge to get this over and done with starting to win over any need to waste some time out here in the country. “What seems to be the problem?”

Johnson sighed.

“It’s my cows.”

“Your cows.”

“I keep finding them cut up.” The man’s tone turned to angry. “Not like no animal done neither.”

Dean wondered how this guy could possibly be running a ranch with a son that only appeared once a month. He sat back into the chair he had been shown and fought back the slight sense of unease that was starting to creep up the back of his spine. He shook it off. He was just being paranoid. A place like this always had hired hands. Probably all lived in the small town near by.

“It’s the mutilations.” Johnson nodded. “It’s probably some type a thing come up here from Mexico.”

Dean resituated himself in his chair and thought of how to exactly proceed.

“The cows? The ones you find, um, cut up? Do you find them in the evening, morning—“

“Don’t you worry ‘bout that now.” The old man cut him off with a dismissing wave of his hand. “It’s real late, and I’m tired.”

A little taken aback by the abrupt loss of interest in the subject, Dean got to his feet as his host struggled to his own.

“I-I could take a look around tonight, if you have a pick up or something—“

“Yer tired too.” The old man declared. “Come on now, I’ll show ya where you can bed down.”

With a sigh, Dean shut his mouth and followed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dean raised his eyes brows when he saw the small bedroom.

Cozy was not a word he’d have put on it. It was stark like what he’d seen of the rest of the man’s house. A pallet like bed, and a bare light bulb hung sickly and yellow in the center of the room. The small window on the far side of the wall was covered by thick dark curtains. It smelled as stale as everything else with the extra added bonus of what he was sure was urine from a nearby bathroom.

“This is… fine.” Dean managed. And it really was just great as far as he was ultimately concerned. He’d slept in worse rooms that he’d had to pay for.

Noticing no clock he checked his watch for the time before he turned back to the small man that stood in the doorway. The old guy seemed nervous now, lingering at the threshold as if he was afraid to step inside the room.

“Don’t worry sir.” Dean tried to assure him. “We’ll get started real early, we’ll find out what’s been going on.”

“Thank you son.” He tried to smile but failed.

Dean looked around on the floor for his bag. Cows. Probably a bunch of bored young rednecks that had nothing better to do than shoot at livestock from the safety of the fence. He smiled a little. Maybe he was older than he thought he was. Wasn’t blaming teenaged kids for everything a sign you were turning one of the great corners? He looked behind the bed and around the shadows cast by the dim light. Still no sign of his duffel.

“Hey, sir? Did you put my bag in here—“

“I’m… I’m real sorry?”

The door shut. There was a soft sliding sound and a sharp click.

“What the—“

Dean stood very still, his heart beating hard in his chest. Taking two steps to the door, he tested the doorknob. Locked. He rattled it again, this time shoving his shoulder hard against it. It didn’t even budge. That sound. That meant a deadbolt.

“Hey!” Dean pounded his fist against the door. “Johnson?”

He listened carefully for any footsteps or any sign that there was anyone there on the other side.

“Johnson!” Dean tried again.

He tried to shoulder it a second time, the solid oak door doing nothing but sending him backwards in pain. Confused, he looked around the sparse room again. In three hard strides he was at the window, ripping the heavy dusty curtains aside.

Dean blinked.

There was no window. It was just a solid wood wall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Four hours later and all Dean had managed to do was knock the doorknob off the door.

It allowed him to see down the hallway he had walked down. It was also lit by a bare bulb and was empty. He sat down heavily with the heavy brass knob in his hand and stared at it.

He was so stupid. He was so unbelievably fucking stupid. He hadn’t checked out a thing before coming down here. Didn’t stake out the place before he walked right in. Didn’t even bother researching old Johnson to see if was still or ever was on the up and up. He thought this was going to be easy. A breeze. A break. Rubbing at his eyes, Dean fought off the yawn that wanted to come.

He’d been driving for almost two days straight and he hadn’t slept since yesterday. All his body wanted to do was shut down while his mind kept it going on a steady stream of adrenaline. He looked again around the corners of the small room searching for anything that could be useful to him. Again, all he saw were bare thick wood walls. The bed was even made up on a wooden frame with no metal pieces to speak of. His phone acted like he was about fifty feet underground. If there was a light switch, it was somewhere on the outside. The light bulb hung from one frayed wire but with his lighter stashed away with his belongings, he didn’t want to put himself in the dark just yet.

Or…

Dean stood up and moving his sleeve down over his hand, carefully twisted the hot glass until it winked and stuttered out.

He looked around again.

A thin weak beam of light came through where the doorknob had broken loose. It reached the floor in a dull yellow spot barely the size of a quarter. Dean turned slowly, looking at the rest of the room and seeing utter total darkness. His thoughts turned back to the question that had been hammering in his mind ever since he felt the doorknob seize and lock in his hand.

Why was he here?

If the old man wanted to kill him he was going about it in a very roundabout kind of way. Why set him up and then lure him into this lockdown? And if he didn’t want him dead than what the hell did he want—

Dean froze.

His gaze was locked on something faint but glimmering there in the dark. It was in the far right corner, up near the ceiling. He walked towards it, his hand out waiting to come in contact with the rough hewn wall.

It was a light. A very small red light.

Turning swiftly back to the center of the room, he fumbled for the bulb in the dark. Screwing it back in, he blinked at the sudden light and turned his attention to the bed. With a shove, he slowly slid it over to the corner. Standing up on it, he found what he thought he might find. There was a small hole drilled carefully through the very corner of the wall where it met the ceiling. In its depths he could just make out the shine of glass embedded deep and far away enough that no prying hands could get at it. And right below it in its hole, was the steady dull shine of the red light that meant the thing was on. Active. Maybe recording.

It was a fucking camera.

“That’s some pretty fancy handywork you got here gramps.” Dean murmured to himself as he tested the hole’s depth.

He couldn’t even get in far enough to smudge the lense.

“The thing is,” Dean continued as he pulled at a loose thread on his flannel sleeve and with a hard yank, ripped a strip off the cuff. “I’m a little camera shy.”

He stuffed the cloth into the hole, blocking whoever was on the other side from their show. The act gave him a brief but almost pleasant sensation of meager triumph. It quickly faded to his former exhaustion as he slumped down onto the bed. He was no better off than he was five minutes earlier. So someone liked to watch. Watch what? Watch him get angry enough to kick a doorknob off a door?

He sighed and turned around, looking back at the locked exit. There was a sound. Someone moving. Steady booted footsteps on the wood floor.

Dean stood up carefully. He could see their shadow as they paused just outside of the door. Shifting their weight from side to side as if they were just about to politely knock. To Dean’s surprise, they actually did. Three gentle knocks against the wood as if he could walk right up and let them in.

He walked up to the door, standing almost as close to it as the person was on the other side.

“Hi Dean.” A man’s voice said. “How are ya?”

Dean blinked and frowned. It wasn’t old man Johnson that was for sure, but he had suspected as much at this point that the old guy wasn’t exactly working alone. Or working this at all for that matter. He wanted to punch in the thick wooden barrier, put his fist right through it and make contact with whatever bastard was standing there trying to make small talk with him.

“It’s almost been a year...” The man said. “But I think you might remember me.”

Dean paused, his heart thudding, and his hands making and unmaking fists. A year? Plenty of things could happen in a year. He struggled to think of who he could have pissed off or crossed within the span of twelve months. There were more than he could count.

“We tried a few times. You know, to arrange this.” The man went on. “But you are hard to pin down these days. You’ve gotten careful. I like that.”

That voice. It did sound like someone familiar... but he couldn’t quite figure where he’d—

“We had to tap into one of your circles finally.”

Johnson. He was on the fringe of the circle if Dean even had one. But it had been enough. It had been enough for him to trust that it had all been for real. It had been enough for him to lower his guard for just one night.

“I told you that we’d see you again, Dean.”

His clenched hands started to tremble at his sides. Dean felt his skin grow cold, his heart beating was the only other sound outside of the man’s voice that he could hear.

“We have a lot to talk about tomorrow.”

No. No. No. No… Dean felt both fists crash against the door. Hard and unyielding, his frustration peaking into a rage that brought water to the corners of his eyes.

“Try to get some sleep.”

The light clicked off.

There was the sound of footsteps once again. This time retreating, leaving him alone in this room he’d been put in. With a yell of rage, Dean kept at it, pounding at the door, tossing his body against it until he finally lay panting on the ground. Listening to the sound of himself breathing in the smothering dark, he leaned his forehead down hard onto the gritty floor. He tried to slow his frantic inhales, tried to stem the panic that was flickering in bright hot white spots behind his eyes.

That man. He was one of the three hunters.

The ones that caught up with him and Sam a year ago. The ones that he was never supposed to see again once his brother blessed them with new identities, giving them nothing but extra years to life in a federal prison. They should be on the run. Out of the country. Cleared from the map. Off the fucking goddamn planet. Dean rolled on to his back, fighting to breathe slowly in and out.

They had kept their promise to find him again.

And this time, Dean was all alone.

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From Removed:

For a long time, Dean listened. Pure silence anywhere, he knew was rare.

Hunter that he was, he assessed his surroundings with his ebbing strength. The cold drip of water from the nearby bathroom sink. The wind outside. The house beyond the knobless door was quiet and still. He had sat as long as he could in the dark before his mind gave up for him and he drifted into a restless doze. He did not remember closing his eyes but came to when the cold woke him from his place on the floor.

He looked around with a gasp, unsure of where he was. His eyes adjusted in the dim light. Conquering his misgivings about the bed he resolved it would be a better place than where he was to sort himself. Small rationales kept him focused. Right now what he needed was heat. All he would do was close his eyes. It seemed like only a few seconds later when they opened again.

He drew back the warm musty wool and found the room still in pitch blackness, the glow on his watch telling him he'd been flat out for five hours.

Getting up, he rubbed his face and wondered what he should do next. It would be daylight by now. If he was counting on residual adrenaline and rage to keep his cool, he had lost it with sleep. He must have been more tired than he realized. Dean's stomach cramped in hunger. His head was on its way to a nice sharp headache from the caffeine withdrawal. He was fucked both ways on his own. Might as well wait until someone decided to play.

The light suddenly came on, the burning filaments blinding him momentarily as he stumbled away from it.

There were footsteps at the door. Dean tensed, readying his fists. How had they known he was awake? He glanced around warily for more hidden cameras. The deadbolt was drawn back, the locks clicked in succession. Dean steadied himself, his cold muscles cramped, his head dizzy from lack of water and food. Whatever came through that door was going to get it, and they were going to get it all--

It was old man that had brought him to the ranch. He was holding a tray and he looked completely terrified.

"What the hell is goin on here Johnson?"

Dean tried to contain his rage but the old man was vacant. He wouldn't even look Dean in the eyes as he shuffled past the threshold muttering in a low voice.

"I used to read all day you know. Collected the damnest things. F-F-From all over!" He stammered. "Shared my books with you type, you hunters, and everyone left me be.'

"Mr. Johnson I--"

"Quiet." He hissed. But the man didn't seem as angry as he was scared. "Don't let them hear you talkin’ too much! Y'hear me?"

Too late for that.

A man stood in the dim light of the hallway beyond with a cocked rifle at the ready. Johnson slowly put the covered tray down on the unmade bed and looked at Dean distrustfully.

"I don't know what you did to these folks, but that's on your head. Not mine!"

Dean was paying closer attention to the man in the hallway. He remembered him very well. It was the youngest of the band of three. The one that always fed him and made sure he had water. Dean looked down at the tray that smelled vaguely like burnt toast. A glass of clear fluid, maybe water, sat next to the plate.

"You best eat." Johnson said as he pushed past him.

Swallowing, Dean stepped backwards. Looking down at the tray, his fist clenched. With a growl, he flung it and its contents against the wall, sending a spray of soggy toast and underdone scrambled eggs onto the floor. The glass of cloudy water crashed and soaked into the grimy wooden planks.

The rifle was set aside and the man stepped into the doorway, into the light.

Dean remembered every set and feature of the calm face. How it swiftly shifted to anger, how it remained almost blank when he was held down and forced to take fluids or food.

“You’re nearly an adult Dean.” He said like he was greeting an old friend he hadn’t seen in a long while. “How’s your arm?”

“Right as rain.” Dean mumbled, unable to take his eyes away from the large person that was coming closer to him. But Dean wasn’t restrained this time. He wasn’t helpless. He could fight back whenever he wanted—

“That’s good.” He said looking down at the arm in question. “But about the food Dean. You have to eat. No getting around that. And you've made a mess. That's not good."

A fist out of nowhere sent Dean sprawling on his back on the floor. Cursing, he made ready to spring back up when felt the cold hard end of the shotgun press firmly against his heaving chest.

"Let’s just take this one step at a time okay?”

"W-Whatever, pal." Dean spat red before the fist came down again, sending his head cracking against the floor.

He lay dizzy and disoriented on the ground for several moments, waiting for the fist to come again and again like it had the last time he’d been left in this man’s care. The taste of blood was thick in his mouth. But nothing was happening. Dean realized that the room was empty again. It was just him and that open door. But then what? This house was surely filled with those other two. And then even if he got past them, then what would he do with the 20 odd mile hike that would get him to the access road? The highway was another 10 after that. Dean briefly wondered if his car was even where he’d left it.

The side of his face throbbed where he'd been hit, hot and swelling. Dean groaned and stirred, getting to his knees and trying to stand up.

"You okay, Dean?" The man entered again, carrying another tray.

The tray he'd upturned remained where it had fell, the stench coming from it making him want to gag. Swaying on his feet, he gave a short sigh and waited for what would come next.

"Now what say we try again?"

Staggering backwards, Dean teetered and fell back onto the bed. Why wasn’t he throwing punches at this guy? The door was wide open, all he had to do was fight. All he had to do was stand up.

“W-what’s your name?” Dean suddenly had to know. These men that knew all his details and addressed him as if they’d known him all their lives were still nameless.

“Lieutenant Franklin Edwards.” The large man saluted curtly and causally with his free hand.

“Former what?” Dean guessed. “Army? Ranger?”

“SEAL.”

Dean felt his mouth fall open just a little bit. There weren’t copious amounts of people in the world that he felt he couldn’t afford to fuck with but a goddamn Navy SEAL was one of them. Those guys were built and trained like machines. Now that he thought back on it all, Edwards being a SEAL made perfect sense.

“Dishonorable discharge.” The man finished, his eyes slightly downcast at the omission.

“Let me guess, you offed somebody you shouldn’t have. Hey, maybe all you did was squeeze a little too hard—“

Former Navy SEAL Lt. Franklin Edwards ignored him and got back to the business at hand.

“Since you’re all grown up Dean, I can give you what an adult deserves. I can give you a choice.”

“A choice." Dean repeated tonelessly.

“You can go ahead and eat the food and drink all of your water. All of it, with a fork and knife, real civilized like. Or?”

Dean moved backwards on the bed until he felt the wall at his back.

“Or, we can do what we did last time.” He sighed. “I want you to know that it makes no difference to me how it gets into ya. As long as it's in ya.”

Dean blinked, his mouth dry and his stomach churning into knots. He felt a cold sweat break out on his arms and face. He looked at the cloudy water in the glass and remembered the drugs they had kept him nearly out of his mind with.

“No.” He shook his head.

“Then you know what I have to do?“

“Call it a day and forget about it?” Dean tried.

Dean was already on the bed but he wasn’t prepared for the hunter to move so fast. He had convinced himself over the hours that he would fight the second he had the chance but his limbs felt sluggish and unresponsive. Every attempt at his own defense was delayed like he was moving through water. He struggled under the Lieutenant’s grip wondering what could have possibly happened to him. He hadn’t drunk anything or eaten anything—

One of his wrists was trapped and went flying back against the bed. Dean watched the small cloud it made upon impact with the piles of thick blankets. It wasn’t dust. It was chalky white. The blankets. He growled in anger, the blankets had been dosed with something and he’d been wrapped up under them for at least five hours.

Dean squeezed his eyes shut when he saw the tube appear. A knee came down on his chest, half smothering him. Hands were on Dean’s face, tipping his head back and opening his mouth.

He bit down hard on plastic, his head feeling lighter.

It was happening. It was happening again. The hard plastic snaking down his throat, the strange feel of the cold water rushing down without ever making contact with his skin. The prolonged gagging and suffocation as time slowly passed until there was finally an empty bottle.

Dean gasped and coughed harshly as the tube was withdrawn.

“Now Dean, about the food?”

Dean searched his face, heaving breathlessly. “Wh-what...?" He writhed away from under the man, landing hard on the floor.

“What is your choice?”

"Aw, y-you gotta be kidding me." Dean let his head thunk weakly against the floor.

His insides roiling with impotent rage, he flung out a hand at the proffered tray, knocking the plastic cover over onto the floor with the rest of it. There was a blackened piece of toast. A mass of yellow scrambled eggs. The smell of the underdone breakfast made Dean’s head swim and his recently filled stomach lurch.

“It’s this or some protein supplements in the tube Dean.” He said. “Which would you rather?”

Dean did not bother with an answer.

“Okay.” Edwards sighed.

Somewhere behind the deafening buzz of his blood pounding in his ears and brutal grip closing around his throat, Dean had to admit that Ed had always been the nice one.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Dean, good to see ya."

The leader of these hunters had somehow thought it necessary to dress semi-formally. His flannel had been washed and pressed even, his boots nearly clean. It was the man that had stood outside his door that night and spoke to him as if he was welcoming him home.

Dean laid panting, insides churning, the front of his shirt stained with what had come back up.

“Get him secured would ya?” The older man stood and stretched. “I’m gonna grab a coffee.”

Dean bit back his words when Edwards’ broad hand picked him up and moved him through the hall and out into the dusty living room. Edwards quickly pushed his charge backwards into one of the cracked sofas and knelt down before him. When Dean heard the clink of metal his knee automatically flew up to catch the man under the chin. He was stopped by the palm of a hand, and a sharp whip across the face. Hard enough to burn but not enough to make him bleed.

Metal clicked around the leather of his boot ankles and Dean tried one more time to stop what was coming for his wrists but someone else appeared behind him. It was the third man, the one that looked as old as the guy who had gone for coffee. He pulled Dean’s head back hard with a hand under his chin. Distracting their captive long enough, Dean’s grasping hands were quickly caught and cuffed, and then tethered to the bottom of it through a chain that looped through his ankles.

Dean shook his head loose of the grip, angrily twisting his trapped feet and hands.

“Captain Yueller wants to have a small talk with you,” Edwards told him as he stretched out a piece of rubber with a thin piece of black tubing in the middle of it. “You have to just sit still and listen.”

More military. Probably some ex special ops. The real deal.

“What’s with the, why are you—“

“When you leave your room you will always have to be restrained.” Edwards explained. “Do you understand?”

Dean listened numbly.

“Do you understand that if you have acknowledged to me your understanding of a subject, that you are not to ask the question again?”

“What happens if I don—“

He didn’t even see the hand coming before he was off the sofa edge and on the floor. The worn wood was cold and hard under his cheek, the hot tang of blood from the inside of his mouth flowed out over his lip.

“You’ll receive a reprimand Dean.” He hauled him back to his seat by his network of chain. “Is that understood?”

Dean worked his jaw back and forth. “Loud and clear.” He glanced up despondently at a nearby stuffed owl that sat stiffly on a fake styrofoam perch.

The band of rubber was wrapped around his head, the thin black piece eased and worked between his teeth and flat down against his tongue. Dean shook his head as if he could rid himself of it, but then quickly realized his small audience was watching with semi-amusement. Like he was some new pet they’d acquired that didn’t quite know the ropes yet. He strained as hard as he could in his binds, making a small pained sound when the metal wouldn’t give him one centimeter of slack. Frustrated and his nerves sparking he bowed his head, trying to even his breathing and not to make himself such a fucking spectacle for these bastards.

The very same hands that held him down and forced him to eat and drink, scruffed his hair and gave him a pat.

The older man, now with coffee, sat down in front of him and smiled. “Edwards, he's gonna be your best friend."

Dean would have liked to say he already was. He had puked all over the guy. How much closer could they possibly get?

He focused his attention on the older hunter, trying to ignore the physical contact of the hand that was still in his hair. He wondered what they would do if he started to throw up again, only this time with their fancy new gag on.

“Hey Edwards, why you don’t go and do somethin’ about that big black car we got out back?” The hunter in charge suggested. “Hide it in one of those barns just in case someone comes callin’ for old Mr. Johnson.”

The hand vanished, and with light tread of footsteps for such a large man, he was gone.

Dean focused on this Yueller guy and tried for his own sake to pretend they were seated in any old living room and about to have some kind of everyday conversation. It just happened to also be the kind of exchange that he’d have no part in whatsoever.

The old hunter was a tall man, probably just about his dad’s height and most likely pushing it into his late fifties. He didn’t move like it though. The guy was solid. His gray hair cut short and precise, his gray eyes steady and discerning. His beard was neatly clipped, his simple green fatigues were something vet would wear to a parade or to a local VFW. His voice had an easy twang to it. Probably Texas.

Yueller took a sip of black coffee before he started.

“My name is Jack, but I’d like you to refer to me as Captain, Captain Yueller, or Sir.”

Dean remembered what Edwards said about asking questions or more likely, about being a smartass and thought it was probably a good thing that they had strapped a rubber gag across his face.

The Captain gestured to the man that was still standing behind Dean.

“This is David Keens, he’s never served, not even a week, but we don’t hold that against him.” He grinned at his own joke. “You will refer to him only as Mr. Keens, or Sir.

Dean weakly returned the Captain’s smile. Two ex-military and one civilian. Probably just as well trained in the private sector. Maybe ex-government.

“The same goes for the Lieutenant whom you already know quite well. Do you understand me so far?”

Dean slowly nodded.

“You see Dean, at this point in my experience, this would be right about the time I would be telling my newest recruit that he is not the most special and unique snowflake that has ever fallen from the sky. I would call him a dime a dozen. Average and just about everything outside the extraordinary...”

Dean wondered just exactly how many had sat in a chair like this before he had and where they were now. He had a pretty good feeling that they didn’t elect to step out of Captain Yueller’s unit all on their own.

“But you are different Dean.” He settled back with his mug on one knee. “You are about as different as they come.”

Dean felt his eyebrows rise as he rolled his eyes. If this guy thought this was big news, he should get a look at what his brother could do with a spoon...

“You were raised with it. Grown up training right in the thick of it. The largest unseen war that rages right here on American soil.” Yueller said, his voice half lost in his own awe. “And here you are, right alongside us now.”

Dean’s expression darkened.

“I know, don’t worry, I’m well aware we ain’t quite there just yet.” He leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “It’ll take some time, but you’ll get to liking it here with us soon enough.”

Dean made a noise indicating his strong disbelief in that eventuality.

The Captain smiled again, a broad real smile as if Dean’s stifled defiance pleased him. He reached and unsnapped the gag, taking it away and placing it aside on the table.

“Now, today I would like to teach you your first and most important lesson.”

“Never liked school much.” Dean mumbled, his speech slurred slightly by the prior blow to his mouth. His throat was raw from breakfast the hard way and he wasn’t sure just how many lessons he could live through in just one day.

Yueller just kept on smiling that sure as shit smile.

“The first thing I need you to learn about life here is that you should never speak unless directly addressed.” He held up his hands in something of an apology. “I know, it sounds hard. But we can help you.”

“Help me how?” Dean asked unenthusiastically as he tried to slide the rest of the way down into the sofa, but his bound wrists were caught up in Mr. Keens’ grasp.

"Well,” Yueller said. “For instance, just now? You weren’t asked a question or directly addressed but you spoke. You spoke out of turn. I realize that for someone like you, well, it must be difficult to restrain these impulses.”

“You could say that.” Dean watched as the man pulled out a desk drawer and took out something that looked like a few strands of electrical wire.

“The method is simple.” He assured him. “It’s used in various animal behavioral trials, using painful stimuli to discourage and thereby abolish unwanted behaviors.”

Dean’s shirt was yanked up and a clear gel applied, making his skin prickle.

“That’s fancy talk for: if it hurts, quit doing it.” Yueller winked.

Dean watched as white contact points were placed up on his chest, sticky on his skin.

“We’ll start them in a place that won’t hurt that much.”

Dean felt himself breathing faster, the contacts were right above his heart and down under his lungs. He didn’t really want to find out where the more painful places happened to be.

“Now, we're gonna start off nice and easy, ok?” The machine under his hand hummed to life, a series of lights coming on one by one. “State your name.”

Dean half smiled, his swollen lip making a full one just about impossible.

“P-Pete Townsend.”

The smile on the man opposite him faded. He gestured to the man behind Dean. “Better hold him, he might hit his head.”

Dean narrowed his eyes. “W-what are –”

He felt the fire uncurl and roil through his chest, seize his heart and make it skip. Several rapid palpitations ended with a hard thump that left him lightheaded. Panting, he lifted his head again slowly. He smelled a burning static smell, felt cold sweat on his skin.

"What you just experienced is called a PVC. That fluttery feeling in your chest is your heart doin' a little dancin’. Nothing to worry about right away but if you get more than six, please let us know. We wouldn't want you to arrest now."

“What the fu—“ His words were silenced, his jaw convulsively clenched shut as the circuit flowed through him again.

When the roar faded and he could hear again, he heard the man named Keens behind him. A slow voice with a drawl to it. Deep south and in no hurry even for a warning.

"Careful there Jack, careful he don't go and bite his tongue."

It stopped again. “I--I swear when I get out of—-" His eyes squeezed shut again, all of his body tensed hard and onto itself, painfully cramping and contorting.

“You see?” The cool even smile was back. “I think you’re getting the gist of this exercise.”

“Y-You fucking piece of—-ah!”

“Maybe not.”

Dean felt his muscles seize and contract with the current, the power not being shut off after a few seconds as it had the first few times. It kept going... He gasped, the pain building, his lungs felt as though they were filled with concrete, going into spasms to take in air, his heart thudding off rhythm—

It suddenly stopped.

“That will be all for today.” Yueller said as he removed the contacts and rolled them neatly back into a ball. “Don’t feel too disappointed, you’ll do better in time.”

Dean tried to find his voice and couldn’t. He didn’t realize Keens was the only reason he was still upright until he was tipped back against the sofa and left there to recover.

“But now,” The Captain sat back in his chair. “It’s your turn.”

“I—I get to do that to you?” Dean stammered hopefully. “Then this place might not be, might not be so bad, a-after all...”

“Now it’s your turn to ask me your questions.” He said, ignoring Dean’s comment as if he hadn’t even heard it. “I know you got a couple for me. Go right on ahead.”

Dean felt his teeth grind together as he steeled his gaze against this man that was holding every single one of the damn cards. Dean didn’t have an inch and this guy knew it. Reveled in it. Wanted it. He had after all, even arranged it all to be just like this. But questions? Well, he pretty much knew why he was here. They wanted a new member for what they thought of as their private Elite and Dean was the lucky draft pick. The other things, their tactics, vocabulary, and methods, that was all explained by their military backgrounds.

But one thing had been on his mind.

“Y-You leave my brother out of this.”

“That’s not a question.” Yueller chided. “But don’t you worry none, our current interest in your brother is zero.”

Dean watched Keens come into view, standing stoically still behind his seated superior.

“Don’t get us wrong?” Yueller quickly started to explain. “Keens here wanted to hunt the boy down and take his skin for that stunt he pulled back over in Wyoming.”

Dean met Keen’s look. He looked like some slightly shorter version of Yueller, darker hair, thinner tighter beard, a baseball cap on with his army issue clothes. Remembering his last stay with the trio, Dean wondered when Army green would be what he’d be wearing too.

“Bringing the feds right down on top of us?” Yueller laughed a little bit. “That was a hell of a time, I have to admit!”

Dean swallowed uncomfortably, his wrists starting to throb, his fingers tingling from the tightness of his binds. He remembered this. Hours of this. He sighed, watching Yueller tap out a cigarette and light it. Sam wasn’t going to come looking for him for a real long time and when he did there was a big wide-open place to start looking. These guys were onto them both now. They’d see someone coming in their direction more than a mile away.

“Okay.” Dean said. “I have a question.”

Yueller slowly exhaled a lungful of smoke, his eyes curious and expectant.

“When do we start hunting?”

Captain Yueller lost what was left of his levity.

“I’m glad you asked.”

 

tbc


	3. Chapter 3

If Dean had learned anything in his twenty seven years it was that life boiled down two things; failure and getting over it.

He knew the mechanics of yielding. When to play along. When to follow. When to put the shield down. Giving up, Dean knew, was rarely final. It was more a matter of balancing the odds. While he still breathed, he could wait and see. He'd done it before. Waited out humility, fear and anything else that could be thrown at him.

He could even grin before he cracked.

Days passed and he got accustomed to their routine. He was good at routine. By the second day he knew he wasn’t being drugged as heavily as he had been. All he felt was tired and sluggish. Like he was forever out of just enough sleep. By the third day he timed that the bare bulb of his room came on every morning at exactly 4:30AM.

It was always Edwards that came to the door now. He had asked about Johnson but had gotten a split lip and a small speech about questions. Dean surmised that they’d either put the old guy somewhere else on his big farm or they had ended him so they wouldn’t have to hear him complain about their presence anymore. Sitting in the dark, he watched his digital watch cycle slowly to the magical number that would start his day. He wondered what would have happened to the old rancher if Dean had just stayed away. If he had followed his better instincts when he had had the chance. As almost a joke, they hadn’t touched his phone. After his first vigorous pat down, the thing was given right back to him like some charming keepsake they were kind enough to hand back unharmed.

It had been a full week and he still hadn’t taken one bite of their food. Hadn’t taken one sip of their water.

Eventually, they felt the need to express concern. The Captain folded his hands on the round table in the study one evening and spoke to him in a voice that Dean knew better than to trust.

"Edwards here told me you're having a problem with the food and water."

Dean said nothing.

"You may speak."

"A tube down your throat ain't exactly part of a balanced breakfast, sir."

The Captain's smile was brief. He even caught Edwards' smirk from behind him.

"That right? Look son, you been out on your own too long. Never had to compromise or take what was given."

"If I may, sir?" Trying to keep the heat out of his voice, Dean swallowed though it hurt like hell. "I think I know a thing or two about compromise."

Dean waited for the back of Keen's hand to connect with his head but it never came. Even his old man would have cuffed him one for that dripping piece of sarcasm but their focus seemed somewhere other than his smart lip. The Captain sat back in his chair and lit a cigarette.

"I am a doctor, Dean. Medical Corp. I've trained the best. I've seen POW's die, force-fed or no. I've treated men who fail to comply with assigned nutrition regimens. We give you water and we expect you to drink it. We give you food and we expect you to eat. That is part of your training."

He stood up, blowing smoke in Dean's face.

"From now on, Edwards will measure and weigh you once a day until you have reached what we ascertain an acceptable range. He will also administer a vitamin supplement via injection."

The Lieutenant saluted. "Keep your coat nice and shiny." He patted Dean on the head again.

"You gotta be yankin' my chain." Dean muttered, flinching at Edwards' touch.

"You best start believing, son." Yueller said.

Dean glared at him, beginning to breathe faster. A hand came down on the hard surface of the desk, the Captain leaning forward, inches from his face.

"This is real and this is now and we are definitely not kidding."

 

 

 

 

 

Dean stared at the tray as it was brought in.

The agreement to just eat the shit so Edwards would leave him alone was close. It was right there on his lips but it just wouldn’t come. On the sixth night, his stomach had hurt so badly all he could do was lay awake and brace himself. Grit his teeth and suffer it as he would any wound. Focus. Breathe.

The hunger he'd known in childhood. The gnawing belly of living on the road, hours on nothing but a handful of peanuts. That was nothing like this. His brother would have just eaten their food without a word. He would have avoided all the rest of it and swallowed his protestations just so he could have control over that one small part of the entire thing. But for Dean, this went way beyond pride and a slice of control. This was about power.

He looked up as the light flickered on. Right on time.

Dean stood up as the locks on the door started to click open. He had rebelled against the injection at first, believing it to be more drugs but he stopped when he felt no change. No warm rush in his head after, no dizziness or numbness.

"Morning, Dean." Edwards said pleasantly as Dean rolled up his sleeve and extended his arm.

He was silent when the swipe of the cold alcohol brushed his inner arm, unflinching when the needle entered his skin. His eyes never left the Lieutenant's face.

"There ya go." Edwards slapped a band-aid over the puncture. "Alright now." He cocked his weapon. "We gonna have a scene today?"

Dean kicked off his boots and without even prodding, stepped onto the scale Edwards set down before him. The Lieutenant nodded, scribbling in his memo.

"Okay." He was unraveling a length of measuring cord. "You know the drill."

Reluctant, Dean tore off his shirt. He could bear the man's fingers on him. Could bear this humiliation. His mind was turned off, tuned in elsewhere.

Sam.

His brother might not have even started to wonder about him by now. The unanswered calls were easily cast off as his being out in some unreachable wilderness. Some no man’s land that Dean had made it quite clear he wouldn't mind getting lost in. However, Dean wasn’t counting on Sam.

He was counting on himself and what he knew about men that hunt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was an air of even more seriousness about the three this morning that wasn’t usually there. Edwards hadn’t even offered him his ‘choice’ for consuming his breakfast and was particularly unforgiving while shoving him into his four-point restraints. It was as if he was in a hurry. Or late for something.

Yueller didn't even wait for him to be seated before he spoke.

“We know it’s only been a week and a half, but we are all very anxious to see you perform in the field.”

Dean nodded without understanding. He started to talk but felt himself stop. Angry at his own compliance he said it anyway, punishment or no punishment at all.

“The field?”

Strangely enough the reprimand didn’t come.

“We... we have a problem.” Yueller explained for the three of them. “Our problems are now your problems Dean.”

Edwards was standing by the door like a good soldier and Keens as ever, was saying nothing. Not because he had some orders not to either. Dean had long since discerned that the guy wasn't a man of many words. The silent hunter sat smoking quietly from a table and watched Dean carefully.

When the uncomfortable lull continued, Dean shrugged and made himself more comfortable in his folding chair.

“How do you figure that?”

“Because something has tracked us to this ranch and it don’t care who the hell is in here with us.”

“Wait, wait wait,” Dean said shaking his head.

Big old strong Captain Yueller suddenly sounded a lot like the people he traveled around the country trying to help. He sounded for the first time uncertain with what he was dealing with.

“Describe this thing to me, what are we talkin' here? Spirit? Pissed off spirit? Corporeal reanim- eh, you know, zombies?”

“We haven’t yet identified it.” Yueller took a seat of his own. “Started after us after we torched the inside of a burial cave out in Anasazi country. Now just can’t seem to shake it. It killed some horses back in Arizona and then some—“

“Killed? What, you mean like mutilations?” Dean’s thoughts turned back to his first night with Johnson. The story he later figured was just some bullshit to make his case look solid. Had he been telling the truth?

“Yes, certain organs removed, teeth extracted, but this isn’t your usual chupacabra chicken and goat bullshite. This thing does people too.”

“Huh.” Dean gave out a low whistle. It hurt his throat but he did it anyway. “You guys went and pissed off something pretty powerful. Out in those Indian caves too did ya?”

“Do you know what it is?” The man demanded in a low voice.

“No idea.” Dean answered.

“No, what?”

“No idea, sir.”

Well. He had a few ideas. And in all reality it sounded just like the Yenaldooshi. A fairly angry and persistent one, but a Skin Walker nonetheless. His guess was that cave they burned was real important to some native out there practicing ánt’įįhnii which was basically just witchcraft with a different name. And all you had to know about witchcraft was that it had a yin and yang no matter what its source. But a guy had to go pretty black to turn into a Skin Walker. That kind of power demanded human sacrifice, usually of a family member, and a lot of skill. He’d killed one before when he had been about seventeen with his father out in the canyons of western Utah. Hadn’t been easy or pretty but it had been possible.

Still, these assumptions were simply speculation. He really had to take a look around and do a little research first. What he didn’t get was just why these guys were so shaken up about it. Maybe this was the thing that had reduced the four down to the three.

Edwards shifted uncomfortably at his station by the door.

"Look,” Dean reasoned, taking note that none of this speak at will talk was getting him into any trouble for a change. “Let me outta these things. Let me take a walk. See if I can find some tracks, see if maybe it’s nesting nearby—“

“If I let you out of here all I’m ever going to see of you again is the next time you show up in the news.”

That was exactly was what was going to happen but Dean didn’t exactly want to broadcast that just yet.

“If you don’t let me out of here and give me a chance, this thing is going to worm its way around this ranch until it finds you.”

His thoughts suddenly went back to Johnson.

“W-Where is the old guy? Where’d you put ‘em?”

"He’s out back in a shed." Yueller said in a strange plain tone of voice. "Got plumbing and everything.”

Dean felt his teeth clench. The old guy was dead. Probably just last night too. That was why they were so worried and that was why using the new dog turned into such a sudden high priority. They wanted to know just how sharp his teeth were.

He held his hands up, rattling the chains hard. “Let me out of here, and I’ll do what I can.”

Yueller shared a look with Mr. Keens before he turned back to Dean.

“There’s something I want to show you first.” He said grimly. “I think it will help you with your work out here.”

Dean thought of heaps of massacred bovines. Strange symbols traced in blood two stories high on barn walls. Crops burned and twisted into odd shapes and patterns. He’d seen and done it all but whatever Yueller thought was so fascinating he’d go right along with it. Whatever it took to get outside and out of these goddamn shackles, Dean would do just about anything the man asked. Because in a few hours, Dean was going to be on his way to the highway and he’d never have to see these bastards again unless it was down the loaded end of a rifle.

In fact, when Dean finally had some spare time on his side again, that’s exactly what he’d be doing. And this time there’d be no one around telling him not to pull the trigger.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fresh night air hit his face like cool clean water.

He hadn’t realized how the dusty house filled with stuffed animal hides had permeated his clothes, his hair, probably even his skin. He took a few deep breaths, noting the position of the moon in the sky and the scarce wisps of frail fish-bone like clouds that drifted far up overhead.

Dean had to stop moving to listen carefully. The chains covered up all other noise. The farm seemed quiet. A little too quiet for a place that was supposed to be filled with animals, no matter how many were scattered on the miles of grazing land around them. Horses. Barn cats. All the creatures large and small that liked to live off the remainders of others. Mice for the horse feed. Owls for the mice. Foxes for the chickens. Snakes for the eggs.

But he didn’t hear a thing.

“That can’t be good.”

“Been like this since last night.” Edwards whispered before he urged him forward with his rifle once again.

“Any tracks?”

“Some.”

“Any around the shed Johnson was in?” Dean didn’t feel like beating around the already dead bush so to speak.

“You shush up now.” Edwards warned.

Dean walked awkwardly in his binds, heading towards one of the larger barns that sat in the immediate area. There were no lights on. The floods attached high up on the buildings walls were dark. He quickly remembered the last barn he had been in with Edwards and felt his step falter.

Maybe he didn’t want to see what Yueller was so intent on showing him.

The Captain was out there with them, walking ahead with Keens. Both of them just shadows amongst more shadows. They were both armed and walking as quietly as the place seemed to demand. Not that it wasn’t fairly easy to with all this mud. Dean studied it as they made their way. Edwards’ tracks were a snap to spot, Yueller’s and Keen’s were also not so bad even though they wore the same boot, they wore different sizes. But besides theirs Dean didn’t see anything besides the sloppy oblong impressions of rubber boots that he saw Johnson store in his foyer for whenever it was that he ventured outside onto his property.

Whatever it was that was lurking around this ranch, it was doing it very carefully. Or selectively. Johnson had mentioned the cattle but now that it had turned its attention to the human beings that now walked the wide empty spaces, it seemed to know that some of them could do it some harm. It seemed to realize that men with guns were to be taken down in a different way entirely.

It all supported his Skin Walker theory as the Walkers were in all actuality, just men. Men who had twisted themselves into the guise of an animal to rend flesh and bone at their will, but men just the same. If Yueller got anxious enough to take these goddamn binds off, Dean had a real chance. He’d probably have to leave the car behind, but he could easily out maneuver these guys by going the opposite direction of the access road and just traveling east until he hit that other state two laner he remembered on his map. It might take him more than a day or so, but he could do it, he could make it—

“In here.” Yueller had stopped in front of the barn, swinging one of the large doors open for them to enter.

Dean peered into its dark interior and didn’t move forward when prompted to by the firearm nudging between his shoulder blades.

“Go on.” Yueller said. “Best tracks we have came in through this way.”

With a short sigh, Dean stepped into the barn, the ground up scent of earth and manure, fertilizer and compost. The air was filled to the brim with the wet decay of hay and the stale used leather of bridle and harness left to rot. He was stepping carefully on wooden planks now, looking down in the meager flash light Edwards was providing, he could see traces of something’s passage. On two feet but not moving like any man. Walking around what he had found so he wouldn’t destroy any of it, he reached up and took the flashlight from Edwards before thinking he should have asked.

No one said anything so he just carried on.

The thing, whatever it was, had skirted the edges of the barn, keeping to the darkest corners. It had paused at an over flowing tin water trough filled with sheets of wavering green algae. He noted the still soaked wood from when and how the creature had taken its fill and sloshed the trough’s contents onto the weathered and porous floor. With the climate and the size of the marks, the thing had been here only a few hours earlier.

“Well,” Dean concluded as he flashed the light above them around the loft just incase he’d get lucky and catch its eye shine. “It seems you have a pest problem. Sirs.”

“I want you to kill it.” Yueller ordered.

“Sure.” Dean shrugged. “But are you guys really gonna tell me that you’ve never come across a Skin Walker before?”

He took their silence as a negative.

“Fine.” Dean declared. “I’ll need a shot gun, some cedar powder ash, let’s see, oh yeah, these goddamn cuffs off and—“

“Not yet.” Yueller said. “That’s not really what I brought you here to show you.”

The beam of their flashlights hovered on the floor in a sickly pools of weak light.

“Unless it’s an actual photograph of the thing, I don’t need it.” Dean explained. “I know what this is, I’ve seen them before—“

“Just follow me.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This barn had been used for horses at one time and not too long ago.

The scent of them lingered. The heady smell of their coats and stalls. The sharp clean scent of their feed and the crisp cold troughs filled with fresh water. The troughs were nothing but rust now, but the farm’s former life was still evident in the remains of its busy past.

They traveled down past the empty stalls and out onto the other side where the horses had probably been left to wander unhindered under the barn’s roof. It was a large empty space, the soft dirt floor covered in moldy straws of hay, the opposite barn doors shut tight, making the vast space seem too quiet and closed in. Keens flicked his light on finally and swept it around until it hit the corner.

Dean blinked at it.

It looked like some kind of holding pen. The kind you set up for a particularly wily horse for transport, or to isolate a problem animal away from the others. It looked as old and run down as the rest of the place. Dean walked towards it, his own weaker flashlight picking up its length and width, barely enough room for an average sized horse or any kind of livestock, but these things weren’t built to keep anything in them for very long.

It was right about then that he saw the body inside of it.

"What the--?"

Why would they do this, take him here to show the old Johson's remains. Dean stumbled forward in his restraints, his gut twisting at what he expected to find when he got close up to the enclosure. Johnson mangled and dead, or mangled and maybe even hanging by a thread. But when his numb fingers finally gripped the rough rust of the flat metal bars, he finally realized what he was looking at.

Dean felt his heart stop.

“You son of a—“

Yueller cleared his throat.

“S-Sammy?” Dean breathed, hardly able to get the words out. “Sam!”

It was his brother’s body, lying in a fallen heap on the barn floor. He didn’t appear as if he’d laid down that way, but had been dropped, his arm twisted oddly at his side, his face turned away from the light.

Frantic, Dean searched the cage’s perimeter with his light for some kind of entry.

“It’s locked.” Yueller said unnecessarily. “Good thing too, I think your Skin Walker was interested in what we kept in here.”

Dean swung towards them. “Y-You said you’d leave him alone!”

“I believe I said that our interest in him is zero.”

Mr. Keens stepped up and using the heavy end of his metal flashlight, pounded on the cage bars loudly three times.

Sam didn’t move.

Dean looked around carefully for any sign of movement from the shadows. That Walker could be standing right in here with them and they’d have no idea. The only thing keeping it from tearing them limb from limb were the loaded weapons they carried. He looked back quickly to his brother and realized with a slow sick dread that he was wearing the clothes he’d last seen him in. When he got onto that bus for California. Dean felt the blood in his face drain and his skin go cold.

"How-How long has he--?”

“Arrived a day just after you.” It was Keens who spoke this time, his words drawn out and languid. “Sure was eager to find out what we done to his brother.”

Yueller laughed a little bit and shook his head. ”Real easy catch, too. Should never work with family Dean." He met Dean's eyes squarely. "Gives ya a weak spot."

Dean felt his heart beating too fast, his grip on the bars turning painful.

“Now,” Yueller continued. “About our pest problem, when you are out of those restraints I want you to remember where your brother is.”

Dean stared hard at his brother’s unmoving body.

“What’s wrong with him?” He heard himself say.

“I want to you remember that if you decide to go running off, or maybe even try to use one of those guns on one of us, that your brother is right here.” Yueller turned his flashlight onto the body in the cage. “Here with us.”

Dean lunged.

He knew he wouldn’t get far, but the feel of the palm of his hand going up and making nice and hard contact with Yueller’s jaw felt like about the best thing in the entire world. The sound of the man crashing down onto the floor felt like, well Dean imagined it must feel a lot like what those Olympic runners felt when they got to set the ceremonial torch to the giant flame. He was on top of him, his bound hands making a perfect chokehold, pushing down and crushing the softest and most vulnerable section of the throat. It was accomplishment laced with victory topped with sweet—

The butt of a rifle hit him square in the side of his head.

He only knew what it was because large blunt objects were usually the only things that made him see this particular shade of white that included bursting and spinning stars. It came one more time, square in the back, and then he felt a booted kick to the stomach. It took all his air away and left him gasping and unmoving down in the damp rotting hay.

Strangely, it put him almost directly next to and eye level with his brother. If the bars weren’t between them, he could have reached over and shook him.

“Sa-Sammy—“ Dean choked out.

Sam’s body shifted.

Dean let out a wheezing breath and closed his eyes. "Aw, thank Jesus."

“I know--- I know it’s only been just over a week Dean.” Captain Yueller was back on his feet, his hand pressed up under his jaw, his voice now suddenly a little raw. “But I must be frank and say I am extremely disappointed in you.”

Dean rolled onto his side, watching Sam breathe slowly in and out.

“And if our exercises aren’t working, than maybe we—we have been going about this the wrong way.”

“You leave him alone.” Dean growled up into the dark and stutter of flashlights up and all around him.

Yueller crouched down.

“Now what if...” The Captain began slowly,”...what if that was all up to his older brother?”

The lock between his wrists clicked, the pressure encircling his hands was suddenly gone.

Dean held them up, making fists until the blood began to flow like normal, taking the numbness away and replacing it with tingling pain, pin pricks and buzzing static of the return of his circulation.

Sam was alive.

And so help him Dean was going to keep him that way.

 

tbc


	4. Chapter 4

Tracking a Skin Walker was relatively easy. Of the few he had encountered, most maintained habitual and recognizable patterns.

It was the killing that was the tricky part.

Animals on every level of the spectrum of intelligence did extraordinary things to stay alive. But only one animal on the planet had the ability to contemplate its own death. Human’s went so far as to even take stock in a heaven and a hell. For all Dean knew, they had made it all up too. Believing so hard that maybe places like that were in some half baked realities outside the fringes of what even he knew.

But Skin Walkers were human too. And they sure as hell believed in that aspect of the afterlife that involved fire and brimstone. Somewhere in their mangled psyche, behind the bloodthirsty half formed animal, there was a man’s heart beating. And the logic of men lead them down quite a few dark paths. They were usually men. Dean wasn’t sure why. He supposed power went to men’s head more than women. Or women didn’t have as deeply honed sense or need for revenge. Whatever the reason, he took in account that the thing he was hunting now, was assuredly male.

It mattered in terms of strength and aggression. Speed and power. Factors that weren’t really conclusive to one sex or the other really, but in what he found, he was given subtle hints. It was stupid stuff but it was there and only ignoring even tiny details could leave one shredded on a wall. Messy eater. Was using where it happened to stop long enough as a bathroom. Compulsively returning to the same spots. He’d seen its return tracks in at least four different variations around the area they were holding Sam. It was frustrated by the lack of access to what had seemed to it an easy target. So he figured he’d give the thing what it wanted. An easy target.

Namely, Edwards.

Dean had spread the cedar ash all over his exposed skin so it wouldn’t pick up his scent. Besides making him smell like the burnt inside of a hope chest, it made him virtually invisible to the Walker, who he knew at this moment was furtively edging and skirting the farm, busy following the sound of a lone whistle. He hadn’t told Edwards to whistle out a tune while he patrolled solo around the perimeter, and in fact he thought it would have just the opposite effect it seemed to be having. The Walker had picked up on it almost right away, breaking the shadows only a few yards from where Dean had planted himself, and going down on all fours to sniff out the owner of the cheerful sound.

It was weird, Dean sometimes thought, just how different people went about trying to accomplish the same end. Edwards knew what he was doing. He wouldn’t have stayed alive this long doing if he didn’t. But Dean never much liked to just go ahead and use himself as bait. The bitch of the problem was that the only sure fire way to kill a walker was to confront it and identify it. It was what he and his dad had done the last time. They had spent nearly a month tracking the thing and finding out where it came from. They talked to everyone they could find just to get one small clue about what should have been the easiest thing in the world.

A name.

If you told one of these things its name it was game over. Kinda like Ruplestilskin. To become a Walker one had to abolish one's name and that, in spiritual terms, involves things much heavier than documents. To become undone in the eyes of the gods required untold blood and pain. But Dean didn’t have that kind of resource. If you didn’t have the name, that left magic. Not really his thing, but Dean knew how to read and when to light a fire. Yueller had allowed him access to his car to get the items he needed. He found some material in his father's old cache that, when mixed together could do a number on a Walker, but what he really needed was what his brother already inherently knew.

But Yueller wouldn’t give him any access to Sam.

He was forced to wonder what it was about his brother that had really put these guys off. Besides putting them on the FBI ten most wanted list that is. It was something else. Dean had a strong suspicion it had a great deal to do with loyalty. He hadn’t missed that look Yueller had given him when he mentioned Sam’s cut and run out to Stanford.

It must have been all those years in the service. His dad had been the same way when Sam took off. It never occurred to Dean that his dad might have been looking at it purely from the angle of loyalty. Three down to two made the odds just that more dire. It was after all, the reason Dean was here in the first place. He was the new number four.

Gun fire.

Three consecutive well placed shots.

“Goddamnit.”

Dean stopped short of the corner of the house and stayed very still. He had told them all a few times that bullets weren’t going to do much to their target but make it angry. And the thing was already in a pretty advanced state of rage as it was.

Like most men, being denied its food had made it pissed.

Dean cocked his head and listened. He could hear a low hissing growl, and he could hear Edwards retreating in the snow. Much too slowly for what was after him but Dean gave him an A for effort. He thought for a moment how it wouldn’t be all that bad if Edwards went and gotten himself eaten alive. Dean stood, shaking out the leather pouch filled with components that, left by themselves, were nothing but harmless objects. He shook his head, strange words he’d forced himself to memorize slipping out of order and coming back, all nonsense if not spoken in correct formation.

He could see it, the lithe, rail-thin body deceptively frail, limbs too elongated and uneven. A half-formed wretch sewn together by some careless God. Teeth too big for its head jutted from its bloodied maw, it's awkward limbs racing on all fours, cutting through the snow like a hot knife to butter. When he rounded the corner, the thing paused in its pursuit. It sensed his movement, straining in vain to catch his scent.

That didn't mean it couldn't see or hear.

Whether Dean had been deemed prey, predator or poisonous, the thing didn't seem to care. Large liquid yellow eyes regarded him curiously. Its body seemed stuck, horribly half way between the man and the beast. A wolf from what Dean could tell. Edwards was gone, disappeared into the tree line.

“Hi...” Dean said as it settled back down, leaning forward on its strangely long and twisted forepaws. “Um, George?”

The name thing was always worth a try.

It tore towards him, snow and the dirt that lay under it flying into the air with its brutal assault. Dean backed up only one step and held up the leather pouch high over his head. Rosary. Crucifix. Garlic. A four freakin’ leaf clover. In the end it was all the same mojo just taken on a different shape.

Dean watched its black claws distend as it reared up into a leap.

The only downside was that he found Navajo a lot more difficult to pronounce than Latin.

 

 

 

 

 

Dean dragged the heavy body into the barn and dropped it with a sigh.

He frowned. A Skin Walker following them all the way out here? The hunt bothered him. Not the mechanics of it, or the final vicious end to it, or even having the thing morph back into the man it had been before its final death throes. None of that was anything to lose sleep over.

He crouched down next to the naked body, bare but for the wolf pelt it wore to mark the animal it had chosen to become. There was something sloppy about the way his keepers went about things. As tight and structured as they were, there was something missing in their methods that set them up for something as weird as this to go down. Torching a burial cave was pretty extreme. In fact, Dean was a little surprised that this monster wasn’t the only thing that came out of the woodwork that wanted their blood. There were just certain things you didn’t mess with no matter what it was that you wanted dead. It was as if they contained no respect for anything about the hunt. Everything outside of the scope of their goals seemed to hold no meaning whatsoever.

Dean had told them to stay out of sight. Their presence and scents would only distract the thing from what and where he wanted it to go. Besides Edwards, Dean was all alone out here. And Edwards, it was safe to say, wasn’t coming out until the coast was clear. That guy, Dean reckoned, was only really good at one thing and that was being told what to do.

Leaving the steaming body behind, Dean ducked back further into the barn and made his way down the wall. While he had the time, he might as well use it.

If Yueller wouldn’t cut him any, he’d make his own visiting hours.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moving as quietly as he could he checked for cameras but didn’t find any.

That didn’t mean they weren’t there, but if they had gone through as much trouble for his brother as they had for him, Dean was fairly certain a camera would be in a more or less obvious area.

The lack of surveillance made him a little nervous.

Not for himself but for his brother. They were treating him like some kind of after thought. Some kind of liability that required occasional maintenance and little else. If they thought Sam was expendable, Dean would let them know just how completely wrong they were. Keeping his flashlight off, he finished his check for small red lights and slowly approached the holding pen. The last time he’d seen Sam, he was lying on his side in the dark, and about all Dean knew was that he was still breathing. As he came closer he saw that he wasn't slumped over on his side anymore but sitting up on his knees against the front panel of the metal bars. They had blind folded and gagged him, but his wrists had been tied haphazardly with oily thin rope and lashed to the bars at a level that forced him to kneel.

It was torture, plain and simple. You didn't need spikes or branding irons. Being forced into one position for long periods, what it did to your muscle and bone, your blood ceasing to flow, the barest movement of your dead limbs turned agonizing, was enough. Holding his breath, his footfall was heavy as he made his way through the old soggy hay-strewn floor.

Sam turned his head sharply in his direction, his hands suddenly pulling and jerking from where they were.

Having come closer, Dean realized that Sam hadn’t been tied to the cage at all, but had somehow gotten himself entangled with the mass of rope in the cage’s rusty bars. He had been stuck like that because no one was coming by and checking in on him. Dean wondered if they even bothered to look in on him once a day.

“Hey, hey, it’s me.”

Sam froze, his chest heaving as he strained to listen.

“It’s me, it’s okay.”

Unable to talk, Sam made a weak hopeful sound, pulling at his hands.

Dean took a good look at him. Sam didn’t look so hot. They weren’t paying the kind of attention to him as they were doing to Dean. He saw no evidence of food or water and his body was slumped forward against his arms as if he had been like that for a very long time. From a distance, it had almost looked like he was praying.

Dean eased the tip of his knife into the heart of the tangled knot and slowly twisted it until it began to loosen. The rope came free from the bars but remained attached to Sam’s wrists. Sam fell backwards awkwardly, his legs numb and useless under him. His hands went up immediately to his mouth pulling at the gag. When it wouldn’t come free he clawed at the blindfold, the ropes around his hands wrapped tightly around his waist, anchoring his hands and not permitting him much mobility.

“Wait, wait...” Dean reached through the bars, the small spaces scraping his skin with their rusty edges. He pulled Sam closer by the shoulder and eased up the tightly bound cloth that had been wound across his eyes. It took several minutes but he managed to get it off.

Sam shook his head, blinking frantically around him.

“Soon Sammy. Soon okay?” Dean whispered so low he could barely hear himself. If they found Dean here they would end his brother’s life just like that and the game really would be over.

For him too.

Sam looked dimly at Dean, his relief slow to come to his face. But his face didn’t look too bad, there were some bruises but those were fading and there was some dried blood on the front of his shirt but who knew whose that was. But there was a weakness there. They hadn’t been feeding him or giving him water on a regular basis.

“Are you hurt?” Dean could hear his father speaking. “Anything broken?”

Sam shook his head.

“Look, I'm sorry but I have to put this back on.” Dean said through gritted teeth, indicating the blindfold. “They can't know I was here.”

They couldn't know he was running around breaking the rules. Rule breaking could only mean one thing in this place. And now that he knew his brother was here he had a feeling it meant that they’d take that heat off of Dean. And all that left was Sam.

“Do you get me?”

Sam slowly nodded.

“I’ll get you out of here okay?”

Dean tugged the blindfold down and tried to ignore his brother's contained panic when it slipped back down tight over his eyes.

“Just hang in there.”

 

 

 

 

 

Dean let himself into the house half expecting all three men to be standing there in wait for him. But the foyer was empty.

When he reached the den he found two of them seated on the old furniture. Yueller looked up at him when he entered, Keens didn’t look up from his book and Edwards was missing. Probably still out in those woods waiting for the A-OK. He tossed down the bloody pelt that he’d taken off the Walker. A source and mark of its power.

"It’s in the tool shed.” Dean said blankly. He didn’t add that the tool shed seemed to have been stripped of any and all tools. “Maybe you can stuff it and hang it up here on the wall—“

Yueller held up a hand. “I really wasn’t sure what to expect tonight Dean, but you really came through.”

The man looked genuinely pleased.

Dean shifted in place, the smell of the Walker strong on his hands and clothes, the cedar ash itchy on his skin as it had mixed with his sweat. He wanted to take one of those lukewarm showers and change his clothes. Yueller stood up and crossed to stand before him.

“I think a few privileges are finally in order here. Dean, you now have free access to the ranch."

Dean’s thoughts flashed to the small dark room he had been locked into every night.

“You can go as you please,” Yueller told him. “Within limits of course.”

He already knew why his own prison cell just got a lot bigger.

“In fact, if you were really determined, I’m sure you could get that car of yours started and be out of sight before we could even catch up with you.”

Dean sat down heavily into a chair. He stared down at the splintered wood floor, noticing for the first time that the grains were all mismatched. The entire house seemed to be made up from scraps, different types of wood in varied lengths and sizes.

“But whatever you do, just remember where your brother is.” Yueller looked at him evenly. “Because now when you do something wrong, it won’t be you that gets the warning, it’s gonna be Sam.”

Dean looked up at him.

“And if you leave this place I can promise you,” Yueller added. “He’ll be staying for a real long time right here with us.”

“You--“

“Careful.” Yueller sat back and reopened his book. “You want your brother to get his rations tonight don’t ya?”

Dean bit back his words and carefully stood, moving slowly because he couldn’t count on himself not doing something really stupid if he didn’t think very hard about each and every step back towards the front door.

“Be back in an hour.” Yueller said offhandedly. “I’d like you to eat with us now.”

Dean had paused with his hand on the latch.

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

They weren’t joking when they said they had granted him full access to the ranch.

When he had walked out the door he was free to go anywhere he wanted. No one followed him. No one appeared with a loaded weapon. No metal heavy and tight around his wrists. Nothing hindering him in any way. The freedom to roam almost made him light headed. Any building, anything at all. After the endless hours in the restraints and the infinity of the nights in the pitch black of that god damn room, the empty derelict ranch was like freaking Disney World.

But he had one location on his mind that had to be addressed first.

After a search of every building he hadn’t explored during his search for the Walker, he finally located a barn tucked back beyond the silos. With difficulty, he pushed the large metal sliding doors open far enough for him to slip inside.

The car didn’t appear damaged in anyway.

“Hey baby." Dean whispered. She was after all, only the third most important constant in his life.

He opened her up and searched the front seat and flipped down the visors for her keys. He didn’t need them but he wanted to know just exactly how far his leash reached. Apparently not that far. The glove compartment was empty of all his belongings. With a frown, he moved back to the trunk, picking it open with a piece he kept hidden in her upholstery that his keepers had missed. Flipping the faux bottom up he felt himself go cold and sick at the same time. The entire trunk was cleared out.

There was nothing left, not even a vial of holy water.

“Fuck.”

Slamming the trunk shut he pulled down the back plate. Borrowing the dip stick from a nearby junked tractor, he checked the gas. To his surprise, she wasn’t empty. It wasn’t much was it was enough to get them the hell out of here at a good number of miles per hour.

He checked his watch. Ten more minutes and he’d be late for his dinner date.

Unwilling to test their patience on his very first night of liberation, Dean decided to be early.

 

 

 

 

 

By comparison, dinner hour among the three was a pretty friendly affair.

He stared down at the slab of meat on his plate, bleeding pink tinged grease into a pool under the burnt foil of his baked potato. A pat of butter melted slowly on a pile of mushy green peas. Dean swallowed back his urge to vomit. It was the first real food that had been put in front of him without the threat of the tube and he found himself unable to even pick up his fork without his stomach lurching.

They all talked around him. Edwards was praising Dean’s work with the Walker. Yueller laughed at the amount of time Edwards had wasted waiting in the woods. Keens listened and interjected every now and then about the consistencies the creature had with other’s he’d read about. Dean noted that. Read about but not actually seen. Once again, he wondered how much hunting these hunters had actually ever done. What had driven them here in the first place.

When Edwards jostled him with a joke about old Johnson missing the show, he almost couldn’t keep himself in check.

He couldn’t slam his fist down and wait for the hammer when it fell down to crush his insolence. They had turned the game all right around. They had turned it around and flipped it inside out. All the rules had changed. So Dean had to change too. What he almost couldn’t bear was that Yueller was enjoying every moment of it. Watching him sit perfectly still like a good boy at the table, using a fork and knife and a napkin across his lap.

Dean waited until he was addressed so he could speak.

"Not hungry Dean?” Yueller finally asked. "Hunt like that makes a man nigh on ravenous." He speared a dripping piece of his steak.

“No, sir.”

“If I didn’t know better I’d say your itchin to ask me something,” Yueller tossed his napkin on his near empty plate and leaned back. “What's on your mind Dean?”

“Yes, sir.” Dean swallowed and tightened the grip he had on his knees under the table. “The rations, can I give them to him?”

“Oh,” Yueller picked at what was left of an empty potato skin. “That.”

The table grew quiet.

“Don’t see why not?”

Keens sat forward. “Now Jack, I don’t think that’s a real good idea—“

“Edwards will go with you,” Yueller continued. “Show you what has to be done.”

Dean immediately stood up.

“In a hurry are ya? Well okay, you heard the man. Get going Lieutenant.”

Edwards regretfully left his steak and potato, but got right up and went to the corner to shoulder his rifle. Dean was already out the front door when he heard Edwards hurrying to catch up to his side. Rules were rules and there wasn’t a single game out there that Dean couldn’t play.

 

 

 

 

 

The barn was quiet.

If you didn’t know that there was a man trapped and silenced somewhere inside its hollow confines, you would have never guessed. When they reached the enclosure, Sam didn’t move or acknowledge them at all. Dean wondered if he’d fallen into some kind of sleep from food deprivation. He knew what it felt like not to have eaten all day long, he couldn’t predict the agony of days.

"Well, betcha he's hungry at least," Edwards commented mildly. He kicked the metal side of the pen next to Sam's head. "Look alive, sport. It's feedin time!"

Dean swallowed and tried to restrain his anger. Edwards looked up and smiled at him. "Sorry? I know how you feel about your kin."

If Dean saw a tube he was going to choke Edwards with it until the thing snapped into two pieces. Instead, Edwards pulled out a capped bottle of water from his back pocket.

“What?” Dean said. “All he gets is water?”

“An average human being can live on nothing but water for eight to ten weeks.” The solider told him like he was reciting something out of a field text book.

“Yeah, but it’s one hell of a down hill trip.” Dean muttered.

“But hey, the Captain said you could give him this." Edwards tossed a packet of powdered supplement on the ground.

Dean scowled as he picked it up.

“You have to bring him to the bathroom too,” Edwards told him. “Over there.”

Over there was one of those rusty horse troughs filled with rain water.

“Fine, whatever, just open it. Sir.”

Dean stood anxiously with the bottle as Edwards wrestled his key into the large lock they had installed onto the holding pen’s side door. He pretended not to watch Edwards carefully. Where he removed the key, how he used it, and where it was replaced.

When the door creaked open, Edwards stood back and cocked his weapon.

“No funny stuff. Just feed 'im and git.”

Dean was already inside, his knees hitting the floor that was just more metal bars barely covered by the rotting hay. Sam was lying still on his back. He turned his head slightly towards Dean when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“Hey Sam, hey it's me.”

Dean gently pushed Sam’s head to the side to see how to get the gag off. It was knotted so severely, he didn’t understand how they had been taking it off all week to give him any relief, let alone rations. With difficulty, he finally loosened it, pulling it out from Sam’s mouth and letting it fall around his neck. His brother gulped in air, his mouth bruised from the block of rubber that had been wedged firmly between his teeth.

Dean made to take off the blindfold.

“No.” Edwards spoke up sharply. “Leave it.”

Sam coughed on the water when it came too fast, moaning when his stomach cramped on it. Dean paused, giving him a moment to adjust before he tried again. The water sputtered out of his brother’s mouth before he could swallow, chest hitching in what Dean knew was fear. Sam's muscles were trembling from exhaustion, the cold rattling his teeth.

“Sam?” Dean squeezed his shoulders, trying to get a reaction. "Talk to me."

Dean watched his brother’s throat work but no words came.

“When was the last time you gave him water, sir?” Dean asked, his gaze trained down hard at the floor.

“Not sure,” Edwards said absently, his attention on the scope of his rifle and the men within it. “Couple days ago.”

“Come on Sam,” Dean reached under his arms to sit him up. “We’re gonna take a little walk.”

“Ca-can’t...” Sam breathed.

“Sure you can, you just need to just--” Dean grunted trying to lift and support his brother’s weight at the same time. “...j-just have to—hafta get the circulation going again.”

Edwards watched them, waiting for them to make the short trip to the bathroom they had arranged.

Dean had Sam out of the cage and into the barn when he whispered tensely into his brother’s ear. “Sorry Sammy.”

With a shout, he shoved Sam as hard as he was physically capable in Edwards direction. Edwards automatically raised his rifle up, and tried to back away but it was too late. All of Sam’s dead weight came tumbling down on him.

Dean rushed forward and wrenched the weapon out of his hands, sending down a well placed sharp strike with the butt end of the rifle to his jaw. Ignoring Edwards’s protests and Sam’s confused groans, Dean fished the inside of the Lieutenant’s jacket for that key. Rolling Sam to the side, he linked his arms under Edwards and dragged him as fast as he could to the waiting open cage. He slammed it closed and shoved the key into the lock.

The first real smile he felt in a long time spread across his face.

Sam had rolled over and managed to get to his knees. He was frantically turning his head in every direction, blinded to what had just happened.

“It’s ok Sam,” Dean panted. “It’s ok, we just gotta get out of here..."

The words sounded familiar. A year old, from his brother’s own lips as they rushed from the back of a shattered shop. The same man that lay dazed behind them in a cage had been once again the obstacle. Dean used the knife he’d slipped off the Lieutenant to make a short clean slice up the black fabric that covered his brother’s eyes. He used the same sharp tip to slide through the coiled white rope, freeing Sam’s hands.

“Can you walk?” Dean asked, helping him up to an unsteady stand.

“I--I’ll fucking walk out of here,” Sam’s hoarse voice was barely his own. “W-Which way?”

Dean slipped the rifle up over one shoulder, and his brother's arm over the other. He guided Sam towards the way out, all of his senses on overdrive in case Yueller or Keens started to figure out that maybe Edwards might be taking a little too long.

“So how was it?” Dean attempted conversationally as they made their way through the dark.

“H-How was what?” Sam hissed as he forced his legs to move.

“The wedding?”

 

tbc


	5. Chapter 5

Dean knew that it had all seemed a little bit too… unproblematic.

Painless even.

Of all the things human beings could inflict on each other, the illusion of freedom was one of the bitchiest. The cruelest men didn't believe in a short leash. Those kind of men will let you run the yard just to get a taste of what it feels like. Letting him keep his cell phone. Rewarding him access and the freedom to feed himself. They were not hoping to win his trust with these and if they were, then they were pretty fucking naive. He, however, was not.

He was desperate.

Sam was in bad shape. Whatever they'd done, it was meant to keep both of them in one place. He was severely dehydrated and could barely stand on his own. Getting Sam out of dodge was above any rational thought in his head. By the time he had gotten the car started and the rusted sliding doors open he thought somewhere, in the back of his mind, that he must be nuts for thinking that he could pull this off. He knew that as soon as he pulled out onto those muddy farm plowed lanes, Yueller and Mr. Keens would be in his headlights, guns at the ready.

It turned out he was right.

He was about to slam his foot down onto the accelerator and just let the tires run right over them when something strange happened. Sam was suddenly painfully gripping Dean’s arm, his other hand clutched tightly against his middle.

"Dean. Stop." Sam's eyes were fluttering closed, his face drained of color.

"Hope you didn’t drink any of that water yerself!” Yueller called out. "Or it'll be biting you in the ass about now."

Sam groaned, fumbling with the door latch.

Dean swung his own door open with a growl.

“What did you do!” He demanded.

"Just bring him back to the house Dean.” Yueller told him. "We need to have a talk."

"I'm not goin’ anywhere!" Dean hollered.

"Fisticuffs?" Yueller had the gall to smile as Sam coughed and heaved. "Bring 'em on. But you don't know what's in your brother and I can tell you right now, you won't wanna find out in the time it takes to get to a hospital."

Dean clenched and unclenched his fists, so hard his knuckles went numb. He turned at the sound of Sam tossing up whatever he had managed to get into his stomach. It sounded bad. Worse than bad. He grit his teeth. He'd go back to them. If this was what it took, then he was ready to make deals. Slumping down into the driver’s seat he cut the engine with a short sigh. As unplanned plans went, this one was going exactly as he’d figured it might.

But at least the car was working.

 

 

 

 

 

Edwards opened the front door for them.

His face was swelled up and bruised, but it didn’t hide the rage that Dean had seen there once before. The anger of a year ago when he had dared take advantage of the man while he slept. He remembered paying for it. He could still feel the needle like bite of glass in his hands, still felt the echo of pain from shattered bone. And Dean had never quite forgotten having been left hanging, his beaten body waiting to die on a meat hook as Edwards' tended his own wounds.

Edwards’s glare as they passed by him seemed to promise more of the same.

Shoving Sam down by his shoulder, Keens seated him in one of the leather chairs. A small amount of white chalky liquid was poured into a shot glass and shoved into Sam's shaking hand.

"Drink." He said.

"Better give 'im another dose." Yueller advised. "He's a big fella."

Dean could hear Sam's breathing even out as he tipped back whatever he was being given. Over the Captain’s shoulder he saw Sam's body leaning weakly over the arm. His skin was still a pale cast of sickly gray, his eyes dull and unalert. Glad that Sam had stopped puking almost on the mark at the end of every ten seconds, Dean was slightly more concerned about his own situation at the moment. Edwards was waiting at attention against the wall, seething and trembling. It made him nervous. But not as nervous as Captain Yueller was making him.

Yueller had his gun out and aimed at the center of Dean’s chest.

“You put those handcuffs on your brother and you do it now.”

“No.” Dean growled.

The gun that was aimed for him swung easily to the right. Before Dean could even reason what was going on, Yueller made one easy squeeze of the trigger, sending a bullet right through Lieutenant Franklin Edwards forehead.

Edwards hovered for a moment, his body still obeying its last order, before he slowly slumped to one side and then down to the floor.

Yueller hadn’t even looked at the man.

Dean stepped backwards. “Jesus Christ—“

The muzzle of the pistol carefully swung to the back of Sam’s head. Sam looked steadily up at Dean and didn’t shut his eyes when the gun was cocked.

“Don’t make me ask one more time Dean.”

Stunned, Dean knelt down to grab the cuffs off the floor, his gaze avoiding the still body of Edwards in the corner.

"Yer a fucking lunatic you know that?” Dean muttered as he separated the chains from one another. “You’re fuckin’ out of your mind!”

“Do you know how many times Edwards here has failed us?” Yueller asked. “He cost me you the first time and I don’t have the hours it would take to regale you with all the little tragedies in between.”

Cursing when the chains wouldn’t untangle, Dean tried to ignore the smell of spent gunpowder filling the room and underneath it the metallic flat scent of warm blood.

“And then right here? About to lose you again?” Yueller asked in disbelief. “He couldn’t even manage delivering a bottle of God damn water.”

Dean bit down hard, a muscle in his jaw twitching when Sam wordlessly held out his hands for him.

“Go ahead,” Yueller urged. “Put ‘em on.”

Sam hissed involuntarily when they tightened. The restraints clicked closed, their size much too small for his brother’s wrists.

“I’m sorry Sam—"

Yueller’s pistol whipped across the side of Sam’s face leaving a bright straight line. Sam blinked once in shock before his eyes rolled and he started to fall forward, right into Dean who was crouched in front of him.

“I think you’ll learn a lot faster this way Dean.” The Captain nodded. “In a way, this was one of the best possible things that could have happened for you to …take …this ….seriously.”

The end of the man’s sentence rose to the frayed ends of checked rage. Dean stared up at the Captain, trying to keep Sam up on top of him and not down on the floor. He let himself look at Edwards then, his grip hard on his brother’s shoulders. A dark flat pool of blood was spreading out from under the body, dripping down between the floor boards and running in rivulets down the natural grooves left in the wood.

“Now finish up with Sam here, and then clean that mess up.”

Edwards was now no longer Edwards. He was now ‘that mess’. Dean wondered if the same order had been given for Johnson. For who knew how many other people that didn’t make Yueller’s cut. Despite Yueller’s unrequited interest in him, Dean knew he wasn’t immune. He carefully tipped Sam back into the chair he was seated in, the line of blood under his eye running wetly down to his jaw. Dean quickly snaked the chain down to the much looser ankle restraints and flipped the lock closed.

"Leave him right there." Mr. Keens said from his place at a table across the room. "When he do come 'round I sure would like to talk to him for a spell."

Dean's confusion shifted to dread.

"You said you didn't have any-"

Yueller shrugged with something like disgust. "What can I say, Dean? Things have gotten a little bit... complicated."

Dean looked back over at Keens and couldn't read the expression the man had on his face.

"But let me make this clear. From now on we aren't playing any more games. Got me?"

"Profoundly, sir."

They needed more help now. Dean had been wondering since he found his brother why they hadn't been using him from the start. Sam was full of the stuff guys like them needed to know. Maybe they thought they were doing pretty good on their own until that Walker showed up on their doorstep. But now they were more than a little bit nervous. But about what? What in the hell were they doing out here?

Despite all their promises, it had been weeks and he had not once been subjected to their own regiment of training. Whatever that entailed. Teaching some old dog some new tricks. But Dean doubted that despite their advanced years that they had anything to teach in regards to the hunt. All their guns and games could do was teach him that he was not in command of himself while within their ranks.

If they didn't know so much about his father he'd write them off as some civilian thrill seekers.

"There’s some tarp out back.” Yueller told him. “You use it and then you burn that up good.”

Dean stood up and pushed all his other thoughts aside. Edwards was still emptying out his blood onto the floor, his skin now cast into a strange color that a person only got when they were dead. Tarp or not, Dean wondered just exactly how he was going to get Edwards body anywhere. It was about then, as he was looking around that he noticed something on the table.

There were a scattering of books.

Something of a common sight whenever he and his brother were set down under a mountain of what ifs that you couldn’t just find on the internet. But there were notebooks as well, filled to the margins with Navajo writing that Dean couldn’t read, but on the top was one word and it was underlined.

Noqoìlpi

Yueller’s hand came down on top of it and slid it away.

“That was an order Dean.”

“Yes, sir.”

Dean turned and walked the back hall that emptied out into the rear of the cabin. It was nothing but stacks of firewood, saw dust under his feet and the night sky cold and purple above. He stood for a moment in the brisk night air, watching the fog of his breath cloud and dissipate. It suddenly occurred to him, that whether Yueller had intended to or not, he finally had gotten his wish. They’d lost a man last year to God knows what, and Yueller had just wasted one of his own right in front of his eyes. But despite all that, all that talk about replenishing the ranks had come true.

His team was intact.

 

 

 

 

 

They always say you never miss someone until they’re gone.

Dean held back a branch in his way but winced when it slipped out of his gloved hand and smacked him on the back of his head. Or how did it go? You never knew what you had until you ate the last one. No, wait… if you let something go free it won’t come back because who the hell would want to be around you anyway—

He paused in the damp undergrowth, and slid a hand down his face. The smell of gasoline was still on his gloves. The black acrid smell of the rubber tarp igniting and smoldering over the body was still right there stuck on replay in his mind. They told him he had done a real good job but Dean already knew that. It wasn’t the first, or he figured, the last time, he’d have to burn human remains. He knew for a body that size you had to have a lot of fuel under it so it would burn slow, let the heat rise real high until after a few hours there was nothing left but pale ashes and splinters of bone. In fact, Edwards had just barely turned to dust when Dean’s keepers suddenly had a brand new set of assignments for him. Apparently Edwards did more than make Dean’s life miserable with a tube and constant idle chatter. He also had quite a few duties around the ranch, all of which now fell on Dean’s shoulders. He just got to do them unarmed.

The most vital apparently, was to patrol the expansive perimeter at least once a day.

Take a long walk. Look at some cows. Didn’t seem so bad? Actually, Dean welcomed the time to refocus his thoughts, get out of range of them and their cameras. Just start thinking clearly again if he could. Dean was doing just that, his other thoughts straying to just how easy it would be to keep walking and walking until the road was in sight. But they had him pinned down better than any locked room or chained tether. He wouldn’t leave Sammy here and they sure as fuck knew it. Hell, they counted on it.

The weather had changed, the temperature rising just enough to turn the precipitation into rain. The steady drip of it was slowly rotting the piles of snow that lay everywhere. Here out in the woods the snow was still pretty thick, but turned slush and ice water for the most part, soaking his boots and the bottoms of his jeans. For the first time since he arrived there he wished they had issued him some of their military digs just so he could get around more easily—

He paused.

The perimeter of the inner part of the ranch was marked. The acres that held the structures and old vehicles were encircled by a low barbed wire fence for the cattle that wandered the hundreds of square miles that surrounded them.

There were tracks in the softened snow and they didn’t belong to any cow.

Bipedal but the gait too long to be human, the set of the toes too wide even with the distortion of the snow to exaggerate anything left behind. Dean crouched down and took a closer look. These weren’t from the Walker he had done in the night before, this was something new. Dean’s gaze flickered upwards and saw claw marks up and down a nearby pine. Stepping over the tracks he’d found he studied the ripped bark, the sap bleeding down the tree’s side and down into the snow. Following the trees that went deeper into the wood and closer to the ranch’s center, he saw that something had traveled from tree to tree without setting a foot down onto the forest floor.

So there were two sets of tracks. And both looked like Skin Walkers.

Looking several yards ahead, Dean half smiled at the section of barbed fence that was toppled over and pressed down into the snow as if it was nothing. It wasn’t so much of a footstep as it was a total barrage, as if something had just plowed and rolled its way through the flimsy barrier. With a small laugh, Dean shook his head. He had no freakin’ clue what could have made that trail.

Correction. Three sets of tracks. If you could call whatever that last thing was a track. It looked more like a small tornado had torn a path through the woods.

It was like a goddamn convention had just gotten into town. Dean looked around in frustration. Whatever those guys had done out there in the desert they had set something large into motion. And they were worried. From the look of these tracks they had a right to be.

He had to figure out what the hell a Noqoìlpi was.

Sam was locked up and there was no way Dean could get a chance to talk to him without calling attention to himself. That left only one other person around here that seemed to know something about anything.

Dean was going to have a talk with Mr. Keens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You don’t mind much if I go right ahead and make myself comfortable do ya?”

Dean silently shook his head as the cold point of the gun never quite left the flesh of his neck. Sometimes traveling under his chin. For a moment, tracing a line up to his temple. By the time Keens had made himself comfortable, Dean couldn’t move his hands or legs.

“No offense.” Keens offered as the last buckle hissed firmly into place.

"None taken." Dean grunted beneath the heavy restraints.

From what little he knew of Keens, he could be sure of one thing: The man took no chances.

This man had the fancy stuff, those heavy and wide things you saw in movies about insane asylums and crazy people. Dean smiled a little bit at that. A guy really had to know his subject to know enough to get the good stuff. No clumsy locking metal for this man, old school leather and buckles all the way. He tested it and found it as secure and unmovable as it looked.

However, he wasn’t here to fight.

Dean looked around at the clutter that surrounded them. Keens had claimed Johnson’s library as his private quarters. A cot was shoved in the corner like an afterthought, but even that was covered with a messy pile of opened and tagged books. It was as if Keens had never seen a collection like it before. Once again, it was obvious that Yueller and Keens’ knowledge seemed to be almost completely limited to the pure basics of everything else a hunter ought to know. Dean hadn’t stopped wondering since he’d arrived there at how their ‘names’ had grown so big in certain circles. Staring at the clean pistol in Keens hand, he considered that it might not have ever been because of any expertise but maybe just their efficient brutality. If you hit anything hard enough it’ll give but in the end all you’d get were bits and pieces.

Dean saw that most of the books left open were filled with old Anasazi script and markings. The others were Hopi and Navajo. All native lore. Whatever it was that they were doing, they sure seemed set on some dark stuff that roiled just out of their reach settled deep in the canyons out west.

“Found yourself a pretty decent stash of info, didn’t you sir?” Dean remarked, all too aware of his disregarding protocol. But there was no response.

All of Johnson’s shelves seemed to have been poured over, pulled out of place and left aside on chairs or the floor.

Keens placed his pistol on the table and sat down next to it. His green fatigues were neat and ironed. For being the civilian of them, he seemed to pay the most attention to his own details. The trousers were tucked perfectly into the tops of his combat boots. The Army green was all in perfect creases and folds. He moved as slowly as he spoke, forcing Dean to think of that measure of time that only people down deep in the south seemed to follow. Unhurried. Leisurely. Dallying. Almost concerned about being unconcerned.

“How old were you the first time you went and pulled the trigger on one of your Daddy’s guns?”

Dean blinked, surprised by the question.

“Go ahead, don’t be shy.”

Dean felt his anger simmer back up at the tone in the man’s voice.

“I don’t know, nine or something.”

“Nine years old.” The corner of Keens mouth pulled down in appreciation as he folded his hands over one knee. “And you never stopped since then.”

“Guess not.”

“Did it ever bother you just a little, all those years your Daddy dragged you through?” Keens was smiling a little bit. “All those years were for just about a little bit of nothin’?”

Dean worked his hands in the binds, the strange sensation of worry starting to eat away at the edges of his anger.

“W--What?”

“What I mean is, Dean,” He stood up and walked around the desk towards a pack of cigarettes. “What exactly you got to show for it?”

Dean looked down and away.

“Gotta stash hidden somewhere? Or is it just the nice smile on people's faces?"

He didn’t want to listen to this bullshit.

"Bet some don't even smile atcha, do they? Hell, even John knew better n' to expect a goddam thank you."

Dean felt his chest heave. He wanted to ask to be released so he could go take up some make believe chore. He wanted to be anywhere but here.

"You mean to tell me there's no part of you that asks yourself what its worth getting spit on for a living?"

He had started to rub his wrists raw in the stiff binds, his gaze fixed on the bookshelves beyond Keens. He tried to read each title, one by one….

“Or maybe” Keens grin settled on him. "A punk like you just does it for the pussy?"

Dean suddenly felt sick, all his urgent questions had completely evaporated.

“Lemme go.” He murmured.

Keens went on as if he hadn’t even heard the request.

"You start out thinkin good. Most of us do. We go on thinkin we're just doing the right thing all the way. Protecting the weak like life was some freakin comic book. That works real well when yer 13 and don't got the real world up your ass. Hell, even Jack. All we wanted was to rid the planet of some nasty buggers."

Dean sneered. "Save me the psycho-babble would ya?"

“You got your skills and that’s just fine.” Keens continued. “Some men would give a lot of things to know what you know. Seen what you’ve seen.“ He nodded as he struck a match. “But what else did your Daddy leave you with?”

Dean realized that he’d tensed every muscle in his body until he had started to slightly shake. Keens was quiet, his cigarette smoke slowly moving around the room, unfurling around them both like ghosts. He sat forward, smiling a tight even smile.

“I once taught in a big fancy school Dean, taught young men like yourself about what was out there in our big wide world.”

Dean heard himself sigh. A school teacher. Probably some big time University professor. Anthropology. Mythology. American Folklore. They were always the type to go off the freakin’ deep end. Obsessions, academic or not, tenured or not, were still a part of the psyche that required a temperament of control. There was no control here. Just the iron guidelines that these men chose to enforce. The rest… the rest was chaos.

“Then I met my good friend Jack Yueller who showed me that not all of this shit on paper,” He flipped through a near by book. “…necessarily started right there on paper.”

Keens tone changed down into something different. Almost reverent. It made Dean look up at him in confusion.

“Aren't you just a little bit tired of swindling credit like a third world con artist? Risking life and limb for people who wouldn't even look at you twice if you asked them the time? Bringing things down on your head for no gain?”

Dean could feel his eyes burn, his anger and frustration mixing to mist and cloud his vision. He angrily blinked it back.

“You call us lunatics Dean,” Keens settled back onto the table. “But what exactly would that make you?”

“What—What do you want?”

“We can put our hands around something that makes all this,” he gestured vaguely to the dilapidated house, the piles of decomposing books and out to the abandoned ranch that spread out for miles in every direction around them. “… worth it.”

Dean looked up at him uncertainly.

"We can give that to you too Dean." Keens smiled. "We can make all this rigmarole you call a life worth something."

The conversation had tilted and whirled out of his control. Dean couldn’t find his bearings, couldn’t find one single question that he had ready on his tongue when he’d first arrived. The restraints felt ten times heavier than they had in the beginning. He briefly struggled in them, suddenly nervous that Keens may not remove them when their business here was concluded.

“And now,” Keens said. “With you and your brother, we’re four again.”

“W-why four?” Dean suddenly stammered, grasping onto the one question he could remember having. “Why do you need four?”

Keen raised his eyebrows.

"You don't know?"

"I guess not!"

“Four points of the compass. Four phases of the moon. There are four wings on a bee and four leaves on a clover.” Keens drew on his smoke. ”That is, if you are lucky.”

Dean stared at him without understanding.

“And we do need to be lucky.” Keens winked.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He was freed again by gunpoint.

Each buckle that came loose let him breathe that much deeper. Each strap that fell away made him feel that much lighter. When he finally stood it was as if he could walk away from Keens and his words and never think back on them again.

Almost.

They let him bring Sam his water again. Yueller didn’t ask, he just handed him the plastic bottle and then handed him the key. Dean stared down at the small thin key that had been the only thing that kept the door to his prison shut tight. He had laid in that room night after night just thinking about what that key may even have looked like. Smiling a little, he gripped it in his fist, letting its sharp edges bite the inside of his hand.

Dean didn’t tell the Captain about the two tracks he’d found or about the third that he wasn’t quite sure what to make of. The two Walkers were around here somewhere, their tracks ending around the tree line that encompassed the ranch’s structures. The other thing, the thing that had blazed a path right through tree and stone, had up and vanished about a few dozen yards in. Dean had looked up, down and sideways but couldn’t figure which direction, if any, it might have gone.

He slid the key into the locks.

The door swung open easily. He had to click on the light to find his brother already inside. Sam was lying on Dean’s ex-bed in his old private room. He was still restrained for some reason, his knees and wrists awkwardly pulled too close together. It seemed his brother had graduated from the barn to this. Dean wasn’t too sure where he was better off. At least it was warmer in here.

Sam tried hard to focus on him when he knelt by his bedside. He was fading in an out, his consciousness tenuous at best. Trying to keep conversation unheard and at a minimum, Dean squeezed his brother’s wrist in a silent greeting. He unscrewed the bottle top and sniffed its contents. The stuff they had forced into Dean had always smelled bitter and off. This water had no odor whatsoever.

“Myths.” Sam breathed in a barely audible voice.

Dean knew Sam was holding on so he could tell him what Keens had asked him after he’d left to take care of Edwards.

He lifted the back of Sam’s head and tipped the bottle up so he could drink. Dean had no choice but assume it was safe to let him have it. They set them up last time but now they had Dean right back where they wanted him. Like Yueller had said, why bother with games now?

“Myths, a-about—“ Sam spit up some of the water while he tried to talk. “About the Navajo—“

“Okay, okay, just take it easy.”

Dean knew he couldn’t do much for Sam while under the Captain’s watch, but he made sure he could at least get two fingers between Sam’s ankle and the metal around it. He did the same for his hands, loosening the binds up just enough so they wouldn’t carve into his skin—

“Myths about the Diné, about the Kintyèl...”

“Wait, wait, hold on a second.” Dean looked into his brother’s glazed eyes and cursed. Whatever they’d given him to make him stop puking had sent him into la la land. But he recognized the sound of the names. They were native. “What do those words mean?”

Dean sat back, watching Sam’s eyes flutter open and close again. While he was grateful that the drugs probably took some of the pain away, he hoped that some of Sam’s reality stayed a little less blurry at the edges for the time being. Dean needed to know what Keens and Yueller were doing. He needed to know why Skin Walkers were coming at this place in droves just for a taste of one of these guys.

“He came to the Diné, the People. Th-the gambler.” Sam smiled a slow strange smile. “And He tricked them.”

“Who did?”

Diné. Wasn’t that what the Navajo called themselves? Dean glanced nervously over his shoulder, they were going to come looking for him soon.

“Who Sam, who tricked them?”

“Noqoìlpi.” Sam told him. “He Who Wins Men—”

Dean pushed the bottle back to his brother’s lips while he still had the time. He didn’t like forcing it on him, but his brother needed it more than he knew.

“H--He never loses Dean.” Sam coughed. “Not unless you trick Him back.”

A myth. A fairy tale. A creature from stories that tricks people and never loses. Sounded great. Sam tried to reach out and touch his arm, but the chains stopped him short.

“You know how he n--never loses?” Sam tried to whisper. He was already half gone, his hands still trying to reach out but unable.

“How?” Dean asked, carefully humoring his brother so he’d keep talking.

“He has a talisman.” Sam said trying to rub at his eyes but failing. “S-Some say it’s an animal, but--but it’s a stone—“

“A stone?” Dean sat up and firmly patted Sam on the face to keep him lucid for just a little while longer. “What kind of stone? Did you tell Keens? Did you tell them that this thing has a— Hey. Hey? Sammy?”

His brother was out. His hands limp on Dean’s. Dean checked his pulse and found it thready. With a small shake of his head he slid down the side of the bed to take a seat on the floor.

 _He Who Wins Men._ Dean didn’t quite like the implication of how far that ownership might go.

There was a being out there that possessed something that made it incapable of losing a wager. Something like that? Well hell, it seemed like it was worth going through a whole lot of trouble for. But a creature with a talisman that granted the biggest wish of them all sounded a lot like something he knew about real well.

And it sounded like a demon.

tbc


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey- I am not sure what's going on with my account but a few or more of my multi-chapters have been in the wrong order, or chapters have been repeated. This fic was missing chapters 3 and 5 all together. XD SO there are a few new chapters here. Sorry for the confusion, I'll spend some time today trying to fix anything else in 'my works'.
> 
> Anyway, back to Winchester!Peril...

The dark was quiet and cold.

The musty smell of the old wood walls around him and the planks underneath brought him back like some fucked up dream. Dean blinked awake in confusion. Looked like he'd stayed long enough for lights out and lock down.

Propped against the bed, the wood frame was hard in the middle of his back. Straightening his head from where it rested awkwardly against his shoulder, his muscles complained when he moved. He didn’t remember even being sleepy let alone tired enough to fall asleep sitting up. Dean stretched with a slight groan, turning his head around to check on Sam. He couldn’t see a thing so he reached over and felt around in the dark until he found Sam’s face. Touching his brother’s cheek, he found it was warm and slightly damp with sweat. Whatever he'd had in his system was probably on its way out. Dean sighed and hit the glow on his watch.

It was just breaking dawn.

His heart jumped at the sharp click of the lock. Muscles stiff and tense, he got to his feet, hoping that whatever came through that door had business with him, and not his sleeping brother.

It was Yueller. He was carrying a duffel with a military insignia. A red cross.

"You. Out."

Dean did not move.

"What's going on?"

In reply, Yueller took his pistol from its holster. Dean swallowed, reluctantly stepping aside to allow the man to place the bag on the bed.

“You go take a seat out there and wait.”

Yueller had a few inches on him, and he used them to look down at Dean square in the eye.

“There’s some rations for you out there.” He told him. “I want to see it all gone by the time I’m done here.”

Dean looked down at Sam who was still sleeping despite the light washing in from the open door and their voices. His gaze fell back onto the canvas bag.

“Step to it, breakfast is gettin’ cold.” Yueller turned his back on him and unzipped the duffel.

Dean saw the bag’s contents and felt none of his anxiety ease. Yueller was giving his brother more of that milky white stuff that had stopped him from being ill yesterday. It had stopped him from being sick but it also drugged him up so bad that the kid could barely complete full sentences. Dean took another look at Yueller’s pistol and sighed. Maybe if they kept giving it to him it would keep him asleep for however long all this lasted. The thought was strangely comforting.

"I said, get goin’.”

He hesitantly stepped backwards towards the door.

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

 

 

 

Dean slowly chewed his food.

The tray with a heap of cold powdered eggs, gritty lengths of sausage and a large plastic bottle of water left much to be desired. His stomach however, had fewer misgivings than he did as he started to put it down and realized just how long it had been since he’d last had anything solid. Just being able to chew again whet his appetite. It tasted better than it should have, his hunger commandeering the reality of freeze dried military rations.

He finished it sooner than he expected and he thought he could even stand to have a little more. Uncapping the water, he sniffed it before he drank. He knew it was a poor test to judge if it had been tampered with, but his thirst won over his exhausting caution.

Besides, they weren't stupid. If today promised any antics, they would need him more than alert.

He sat back in the cracked leather chair and sighed. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could do this. He felt drained and not entirely himself. But then that was partially the whole point of this. His senses were hovering on overload, his body trembling with a steady constant flow of adrenaline.

Dean rubbed his face, feeling the days of beard that had grown in and wondering in the blur of time just how long it had been since he’d had a shave.

“I found tracks.”

Yueller took a look at the empty tray as he took a seat opposite Dean. His small nod of approval made Dean's stomach roil as he pushed the tray away uncomfortably.

"What did you do to my brother?" Dean asked, feeling his jaw tighten. Yueller ignored him.

“Set of two. They're all over the damn place. All last night. More Skin Walkers. Keens almost got a clean shot on one of the bastards.”

Dean listened carefully, his thoughts shifting to the tracks he had neglected to mention the day before. The Walkers had this place mapped and surrounded by now. But for some reason, just as when Dean had found the mark of their passage, he didn’t feel the fear that he saw flash in Yueller’s eyes.

These men turned beasts weren’t here for Dean even though he had killed one of their own. They were here for something else.

“Some of those tracks,” Yueller went on in a voice slightly strained with disbelief. “They came right up to the goddamn front door.”

Looking around, Dean didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it earlier. There was something in or around the house keeping these Walkers from crossing the threshold. Old Johnson must have placed a seal on it before he died, something to protect his property from any variation of unwelcome phenomenon. Wards under the welcome mats, engravings hidden in the wooden beams. Whatever his opinion of him, the man had been an academic of the flip side and he knew better than most hunters how to guard his keep.

And from what Johnson hadn’t done, Keens surely knew a trick or two that had kept them alive thus far.

He ground the heel of his hand into his eyes, trying to sort his thoughts. He had to keep a cool head. Edwards was gone and that had Yueller backed into a corner. The man could not realistically afford another casualty. Stakes being what they were, they were both in a position to lose.

Not the best odds but they were good enough.

"Permission to speak?" Dean sat forward. “Sir?”

"Sure?" Yueller lit a smoke. “Why not?”

Dean looked down into his folded hands.

"I think we both know the games need to end if we're gonna make it outta here alive. You have some kinda price on your head and you need my help." He managed a brief weak smile. "Don't see why ya couldn't've just asked. But I'm letting you know that every man under this roof has his own priorities and right now mine is my brother."

Yueller's brow knotted darkly.

"Just what are you getting at?"

"Just..." Dean swallowed. "...tell me what the hell you’re doing to him."

"I don’t have to tell you a damn thing. Like I said before, his life all depends on—"

To his own amazement, Dean cut him off rapidly and furiously.

"You've made it crystal clear you don't give a rat's ass whether or not Sam lives or dies but it means a hell of a lot to me. You're gonna want me keepin’ my head if we're talkin’ plural Skin Walkers out there!"

Truth was, they were gonna want him even more than sharp if he had to come face to face with whatever it was that had plowed through that forest like a battering ram. Besides, Yueller was doing a piss poor job of pretending that getting rid of a couple of witches was what this was all about.

"There’s something out there that wants you dead Yueller.” Dean pointed towards the door. “I don’t know what the hell you and your men were doing out in that desert but you called down something big on your ass and I’m not sure anything I can do will save you.”

Dean realized his chest was heaving. He wasn't entirely sure whether or not what he'd just said would save him a concussion from the Captain’s large fist. However, he did know with some certainty that it would not earn him a bullet to the head.

“You shut your damn mouth.” Yueller hissed, standing up slowly. “Don't think I can't or won't break every bone in your body before all this is said and done."

“Did you find the other tracks Yueller? They aren’t from any Walker I’ve ever seen.” Dean said in a low voice. It was a challenge to see if the man would admit that there was something else, something more dangerous than man made witchcraft, lurking out there just beyond the trees.

Yueller paled and stepped back away from him.

“Breaking my arm again isn’t going to make that son of a bitch go anywhere.” Dean assured him. “And I think you know exactly what the hell that thing is.”

The man's fury was a quiet thing, a frail cover of patience and calm rationale that could explode at any moment. He watched Yueller take his seat again and regain his composure.

"What's it that you want Dean?"

"First. My brother. What did you give him?"

Yueller was completely frustrated by the shift in focus but he managed to shrug and feign a sigh.

"A number of things. But at the moment, Thorazine. And a lot of it.”

Dean’s felt his eyebrows raise.

“Can’t cut him off cold turkey or you’ll see the withdrawal do some tricks on his system that he might not come out of. So if you want to keep him nice and level, you'll think twice before you get it in your head to start trying to call the shots."

Fucking Christ. Thorazine? That was a major antipsychotic tranquilizer. Hell, Dean’d heard they’d give the stuff to addicts overloading on LSD in emergency rooms. It was so strong he’d also heard about the drug being used as a preanesthetic for freaking cattle.

“You’ll cut his dosage.” Dean said tightly. “And you’ll feed him.”

"You really surprise me Dean." Yueller ground out his cigarette in the palm of his gloved hand. "But you shouldn’t worry so much. Dehydration and malnourishment are nothing he won’t live through. We let him rot for days before his metabolic rate finally took a nose dive. That boy's got enough meat on 'im to last."

Dean fought the urge to reach over and try to remove the casual look that played across the man’s face as he discussed his brother’s decline as some idle happenstance. It was like some incidental byproduct of the situation at hand that Dean was somehow blowing completely out of proportion.

Yueller sat back and simply smiled at him.

“Dean, let me ask you a question?”

Dean watched the man closely.

“You a betting man?”

He shrugged. “Depends on the odds.”

“What would you say the odds are right now?”

Dean wondered what he meant exactly. The odds of them all arriving at the end of this alive seemed pretty slim. The chances of anything at the moment were as unknown as a pair of dice tossed up high into the air. But at least the man had finally gotten down to what Dean had been suspecting ever since Sam had managed to clue him in on what Noqoìlpi might be. It had everything to do with the odds and, as Keen had mentioned, a whole lot of luck.

But first things first.

“You’re gonna feed Sam.” Dean said again. “None of that freeze dried crap either. Johnson must have left something decent around here.”

Yueller stared at him, the muscles in his arms twitching.

“And then we get to talking about the real odds.”

“I thought we already went and tried that.” Yueller breathed out tiredly.

“You tell me more about the Gambler.” Dean suggested strongly. “The one that you tried to trick out there in the desert.”

Yueller’s eyes narrowed and his jaw worked tightly.

Dean sat back and cracked his knuckles.

“Then we can talk about smoking us some Navajo mojo."

 

 

 

 

 

The bathroom’s dim light revealed a towel with a bar of soap and a plastic disposable razor on it.

It seemed he wasn’t the only one getting tired of his scratchy beard. Dean’s smile faded as he saw what had also been left for him. He'd been instructed to shower and shave, an order he was more than willing to obey. But before he did, he'd watched real food go into Sam. Johnson it seemed had fallen into the category of well prepared isolationists. Keens had been reluctant but he was eventually granted access to their limited stock. Real eggs. Old butter. Even a side of salted pork in a barrel.

That would have to be enough for now.

A green army shirt and camouflage trousers had been set aside for him. Some wool socks and a pair of combat boots that looked just about his size. Dean hit the shower’s faucet, relieved at the loud hiss it made and the sudden rise of steam from what seemed like honest to God hot boiling water from the tap.

He shook his head.

Every single time he thought that maybe he was wrong about how wise his keepers were, they went and proved him right again. Dean picked up one of the boots and thoughtfully looked at the carefully buffed black leather. You never sent a man out on a hunt in boots he hasn’t broken in himself.

Shrugging off his jacket and shirt, he watched the mirror over the sink cloud with the thick steam. Stepping under the scalding hot spray of water, he thought about just how many other details in their carefully ordered world that they also completely neglected. With a shake of his head, he started to rub the bar of soap briskly between his hands.

Yueller’s story had been something all right.

Dean waited to hear the strange native word Noqoìlpi. He waited for the confession about skipping the deal with the devil and going right ahead to casting bets with one. But the halting edited version he got was something a bit more simple.

And strange.

Seemed like, from what little Dean could gather from the Captain’s brief and curt description, was that Yueller and his crew had gone out there to that Anasazi burial cave with just about enough knowledge to summon something. Yueller ignored Dean’s question of why and how. He didn’t even look Dean in the eyes as he continued speaking, his audience incidental and insignificant. But what they had summoned was a far cry from any of the things on the pages of Keens' books.

They had tried to fix it, tried to send it back to its resting place. Insulted and enraged, it had cursed them and their profanity. These strange pale men who had no right to stand in one of the holiest places of a people with whom they shared no blood.

Yueller had seen three wars in his lifetime. But the rage of a god was no comparison.

Because of their middling efforts everything had gone wrong. The cave, sacred and untouched for centuries, had been burnt to a blackened pit. They'd fled choking on ash, spitting blood.

One of their men was left dead.

That had been over a year ago.

That was his story. Very neat and clean and utterly incomplete. Yueller’s version had been colored into almost an ideal picture of his faultless cause but Dean could see right through it. He was a man that was pretty good at filling in some of those blanks himself. If all what Yueller had told him was true, then they were all in a lot of trouble. Because Dean was pretty sure that the thing they had summoned had made a wager.

Now the time had come for it to collect.

 

 

 

 

 

 

He almost felt like himself again.

Just himself in someone else’s clothes.

Yueller had nodded in satisfaction when Dean finally emerged from the small bathroom in his new uniform. He handed him a nylon zip up jacket that was the same army green of his T-shirt. Dean didn’t thank him when it slid over his cooled skin and immediately started to warm him up. He didn’t like the thought of how he must look now. Just like them. Just another member of the team.

“I want you to find the Walkers, and I want you to take care of ‘em.”

Dean felt his hands working on the thighs of his fatigues. “I’ll need a few things…”

“You’ll have access to some of the materials we took from your car.”

There wasn’t much left there to work with. He’d used up just about everything he had on that one Walker alone. How was he supposed to kill off two of the things with no—

“In here.” Yueller was unlocking a door. “You have 5 minutes to get whatever it is you need together.”

Dean peered over Yueller’s shoulder before he stepped in. It was a small room, a cluttered desk and some bookshelves were all it had in it besides a dusty window. It must have been Johnson’s office.

“They’re not gonna come out.” Dean said as he walked in and carefully looked around. He spotted a small assortment of what he knew was his on the floor along the wall. “They’re smart, they know I’m after them. Tracking them could take days.”

The cedar ash was there, so that was good news, but the other components Dean needed had been used up. All that was left was of no use to him. He crouched down and examined a bottle of holy water with a sigh. There were other things in the room that also seemed new and out of place. Dean guessed that Yueller and Keens had made this room storage for their own arsenal as well.

His old man would have had a good laugh.

A sheathed crucifix of plain wood and pewter lay up against the wall. It was unadorned and perfunctionary, nothing that couldn't be bought during a south of the border saint revival. Surely it was nothing quickly taken off the hands of a true holy man or stolen away off a used altar. Their knives were sharp but had no small engravings of the many wards that would make them stronger, poisonous or more potent to a particular beast. The firearms were modern and expensive.

Their collection was as average as their knowledge, mediocre and unimpressive.

Dean’s gaze fell on Johnson’s desk and the items laid out on it. An odd assortment of rings of all sizes collected and bound up on a twist of wire. A piece of petrified wood. A conch shell with its insides rubbed a deep blood red instead of the natural pale pink. But what Dean saw sitting alongside the rest of it made him pause.

It was a stone. A smooth polished piece of turquoise.

He moved over to the desk and distracted Yueller from his interest in it by pulling open the top drawer.

“Gonna be a tough hunt.” He said, almost conversationally. "Not like I have a Skin Walker mating call on me."

“The employ of bait worked in our previous operation.” Yueller said. “We'll try that again."

He was surprised that the Captain, who had done pretty much everything he could to keep himself and Keens out of harm’s way, was now willing to volunteer to call out a couple of Walkers. Walkers, that Dean was fairly certain, were only here because of these men and what they had done.

The top drawer had nothing but a scattering of random papers. Dean moved down to the side drawers, studying the pale blue palm sized rock from the corner of his eye. It seemed as ordinary as anything else they owned, but Dean wasn’t fooled by ordinary most of the time. And Sam had said something about a stone—

He paused.

To his surprise, he found the second and largest drawer of the desk to be compartmentalized, with sections divided into even smaller sections. It was an apothecary, the musty scent of dried leaves and waxy berries hit him in a rush. His smile returned with silent thanks to the late old hunter as he dug through the new find. Unfortunately, the stash was relatively small and offered none of the ingredients specific to offing a Walker. However, he did find one thing.

Something stopped him before he could slip the small packet into his pocket.

“Christ--“

Dean found himself pressed hard against the wall, his arm twisted up behind him, the grip on his wrist tightened just to the edge of breaking it. At least it wasn’t his bad arm, the one that had been broken. That would have really hurt—

“ArGNNn!”

His other arm joined his right, his wrists crisscrossing each other and painfully pressed into the middle of his back. With one small nudge, Dean was forced up onto the balls of his feet in the shiny new and uncomfortable combat boots. He squeezed his eyes shut, his instinct to drop to the ground out from under Yueller and floor the man was overwhelming his own force fed compliance. He had to play it like they wanted. He couldn’t make any more stupid fucking mistakes.

“What’s that?” Yueller asked from behind him.

Dean’s hands twitched, unable to move. He tried to look down at the floor. It was lying in plain sight, the old yellowed plastic bag filled with small dried berries. The grip on his wrists shoved him up further, forcing him all the way up onto his toes. With a groan, he wondered if getting out of Yueller’s grasp would have been as easy as he had maybe imagined it would.

“M--Might help?” Was all he got out.

Yueller looked down at it for a moment before he released him.

Dean caught his breath and worked his arms a few times to make sure they were still functioning like they should. Cracking one of his throbbing wrists he regarded Yueller warily.

"Now, about bait--" He began.

“Bait’s already been set." Yueller said.

Dean stared at him.

“I suggest you hurry along and find it before they do.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dean crouched outside the corner of the house in the dim daylight that fell down gray through a low layer of roiling clouds.

The trees made a black lattice work of their branches overhead, the tree line thick with pines and able to hide just about anything. Rolling the plastic bag between his fingertips, he pulled it out of his pocket and shook the faded blue seeds out into his palm. As he’d thought it had been fashioned into some kind of ornament, long and big enough for a necklace. Most people knew them as juniper berries but the natives out west called them something else. Ghost beads.

They were thought to be able to ward off a great many things. One of them being Skin Walkers. Dean looped the strand twice around his wrist and ventured into the open muddy ground of the ranch’s main yard. The barn was a good dozen yards ahead. The rest of the smaller sheds and whatnot were scattered farther out beyond that. The only thing between him and the house was an old water pump that the place might have used in its former days before it had dug in a well water system.

The pump was rusted and frozen in the down position.

Dean trained his eyes on the ground.

"Son of a bitch..." He breathed.

He’d found the bait.

His brother was sprawled in the icy mud, one wrist encircled in a steel cuff that wound and locked around the water pump’s solid base. Dean walked closer in huge strides, looking in every direction, waiting to see the shadow and shape of the warped human forms appear among the trees. But he saw nothing. For for some reason, as he did the day before, he felt removed from their presence. As if he already knew that their need and reason for being here had nothing to do with him. Unless he stepped into their path he felt no threat. Unfortunately that was all about to change.

He knelt down beside Sam and rolled his head towards him.

"Sammy?" Dean grabbed his shoulders and gave him a small shake.

Sam winced.

“Hey? Sam?”

Sam was not home. Dean lifted his eyelids and saw only the whites of his eyes.

“Damnit. They gave you the good stuff."

Sam tossed his head and moaned deliriously.

“S-Slow down...—“

"Will do Sammy." Dean assured him.

He clutched a loose loop of the ghost beads in his hand like a rosary and looked around frantically. Just a few feet from them and out of Sam’s reach was a large bowie knife stuck down into the ground. Beside that lay a pistol.

Dean pulled the blade free and wiped it clean on his jacket sleeve. He slipped the cold metal of the gun into the front of his fatigues. Yueller had left them for him. Both completely useless, but he appreciated the thought. His bait, however, was effective. Walkers were like the animals they took shape and form of. Cautious and wary. Careful and bold. And opportunistic of the wounded and weak.

There was no telling how much dope Sam had been given but it had to be a hell of a lot to get him into a state like this. Sam was only wearing a shirt and his jeans, his boots missing the laces. Dean pulled off his warm jacket with a small amount of regret. Pulling Sam’s free muddy hand through one sleeve, Dean wrapped the rest of the nylon coat around his body. Bracing himself as the cold air settled on the bare skin of his arms he quickly unlaced the necklace from his wrist and tucked it deep into the front pocket of Sam’s jeans. He looked up at the sky.

He had more than a few hours before sun down.

Dean looked around and let his gaze fall on the barn. The building had an upper loft that had a wide opening overlooking the house. It had an old pulley system hanging over it to lower and raise bales of hay. He would be able to see in almost every direction from up there, not to mention the ranch’s entire yard that reached around the front of the cabin. Including Sam. Noting the patch work of tracks under his boots as he made his way to the barn, he was glad the Captain had made him eat.

It was going to be a long day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Parting cobwebs like curtains, Dean thought hard about anything he had ever heard about the witches of the Navajo.

The tricky thing was that the only people that knew anything about them were the Navajo themselves and they tended to treat the subject like some kind of pornography. It was uncomfortable. Taboo. Unspoken of. But dad always knew people who knew people and some of those were natives of like mind. However, even the sum of their considerable knowledge only lead down two roads of useful lethal options.

A Skin Walkers’ name or a Skin Walkers’ magic.

Dean had neither. And truth be told, the Walkers were really the least of his worries.

He resettled himself in the shadows of the rectangular window that made up half the loft’s wall. Sam hadn’t moved since he’d left him there hours ago, and the air was getting colder. Flexing all his muscles to keep his circulation going, Dean watched the cloudy sky grow darker and darker. What he was really on the watch for was that other thing. The thing that had left its trail like a wrecking ball. That unseen threat concerned him more than some pissed off magic users in cursed animal skins. That thing was what was really keeping his captors up at night.

_He Who Wins Men._

Noqoìlpi

Dean had to hand it to them, not every mortal was stupid or bold enough to piss off what sounded like the makings of a demigod. Hell, they should be handed a medal of bravery for thinking to summon it in the first place. Nothing good ever befell mortals who defied the immortal. He'd love to stay and watch, but owed demigod or not, this battle ultimately did not belong to anyone but the men who started it.

Dean sighed.

And the men that got dragged into it whether they liked it or not. He shifted his weight quietly to his other knee and shook the feeling of dread off. He still had a few tricks left up his sleeve. Even for the likes of something like Noqoìlpi.

His eyes flickered on something in the shadows.

Dean opened and closed his eyes slowly, trying to hone in on what he'd glimpsed. The dark was only cut by faint shards of far off lamplight peeking in through the slats in the wall. Dean felt his eyes closing again, heavy and strange.

A pale movement, like a cat's eye opened and closed flashed from the other side of the barn. Dean tensed, his heart racing. He was sure he'd seen it. Dean did not breathe or blink in the pitch darkness until he spotted a faint blip like the gossamer of an opal began to pulse softly. Colors danced against the dark, like the remains of a flash bulb. Dean shut his eyes tightly and stared again. The shape of two eyes like strobe lights thrummed noiselessly, growing brighter and larger as he watched.

A rapid flutter of wings stirred the air around him. Dean cocked his gun and fired, hitting the high beam on his flashlight.

It was there, its unnatural form splayed against the wall. A man taken on the form of an owl. Its eyes too big, like burning discs in its scrawny head and thin claw like hands. It gave a high pitched shriek, pale bony fingers knotted like hooks as it scuttled like an insect up the walls and over the roof, headed for the window above the hay silo.

Dean raised his gun to aim again but the thing had vanished.

He looked grimly at the smoking muzzle of his weapon. He wasn’t doing anything but making a lot of noise with the damn thing. The reflex to use it had been automatic but it wasn’t as if they didn’t already know he was there. So much for the cedar ash.

Movement, from far below him quickly caught his attention.

He sat forward at the loft’s edge, watching anxiously. Shapes crept out of the shadows as if they were made from the dark themselves. One crawled with the awkward jerking movements of what he had seen fly right over his head, its giant luminous eyes flashing in every direction, inhuman and cold. It was alien to land, loping bizarrely across the mud with its strange limbs. The other Walker was much more at home with the earth, its skull elongated and close down to the ground as it followed Sam’s scent. It stopped, rearing up on thick haunches to stand like a man, a sound of a dog like growl rising from its long shaggy throat.

They both approached Sam carefully, slowly like he was some kind of trap ready to be sprung. But his brother was unaware of them, shifting slightly, lost behind his closed eyes. The black snout of the thing nudged Sam under his hip, rolling him over onto his face. Dean could hear the clang of the metal chain lose its slack and go taut.

"Sam!" He shouted down.

Dean swallowed back the cold hard lump in his throat, hoping against hope that everything that was ever said about the ward he’d placed in his brother’s clothing was true. They would just move on, maybe towards the house, try to find and sniff out their real prey—

The quiet night suddenly shifted into a frenzy of noise.

The Skin Walkers were shrieking.

A sudden wind poured strongly from down around the trees. Creaking their branches and hissing loudly through their leaves, Dean fell backwards onto the wooden planks as it blustered up the side of the barn and swirled inside. Dust and hay flew everywhere practically blinding him. Holding up his arm over his eyes he struggled to lean forward over the edge to see what the Walkers were doing.

They were both gone, scattered back into the trees as soon as the wind hit.

Dean’s eyes widened as he watched the gale sweep down across the muddy yard, stir up the bedraggled flag Johnson had by his front door and start ripping the weathered wood shingles off the top of the roof. Everything was growing darker, like ink poured into a clear glass of water, diffusing the air and making it too heavy to breathe.

He scrambled for the loft’s rickety ladder, relieved that it was still upright, he half slid down the lower section hitting the barn floor with a roll when it finally tipped and crashed to the floor. Racing for the entrance he stopped in confusion when he hit the outside. It was darker. He raised his hand and experimentally waved it through the air. It was like running his hand through a pool of thick tepid water. He started walking, the sensation of it all over his body as he cut through it. Dean involuntarily shuddered as it coldy seeped down the back of his neck and down his spine.

Traveling blindly in a direction based on instinct alone, Dean was relieved when the water pump wavered into view through the clouds and eddies made by the wind. It was either his imagination or it seemed warmer down here. The smell of the farm and mud replaced with something dry and acrid. It was the unmistakable clean smooth scent of the desert. The sun baked red rocks that cooled to cold with night fall and the rushing hiss of sand falling in a scatter against a scoured cave wall...

Dean picked up his pace, fighting with the bursts of wind that pushed him backwards. He lowered his arms that were up protectively over his face. Blinking into the ebbing gusts, he stared down at where he’d left his brother.

The steel length of chain lay just as he’d last seen it. The circle of the cuff not pried open or damaged in any way. It lay closed and locked in the mud.

But there was nothing in it.

Sam was gone.

tbc


	7. Chapter 7

A cold steady rain had started.

It cleared away the strange cast of darkness, washing it down into the mud, melting into the gray heaps of slush. The night again was clear and frozen. Dean sat several yards into the dark of the forest and listened to himself breathe.

He'd searched every inch of ground covering the barn's circumference, shouting himself hoarse. He'd then ventured into the gnarled tangle of tall weeds growing wild in the field. Against his better logic, he'd finally stumbled into the patch of woods, out of breath and out of ideas. It took a while for him to stop asking the air. To stop repeating his brother's name long after he knew it was pointless. His heart wouldn't slow down, the frantic rush of adrenaline pounding in his head.

There was no trace. Not even a footprint in the mud.

The forest was not quiet. The wind whipping through the trees made a white noise all around him, the cold rushing into his clothes. Sounds he could not see, a throaty high pitched howl. The distant shriek of some carnivorous bird. All of it seemed just beyond his reach. The Walkers were here, possibly watching him from wherever they'd hidden themselves. It was stupid, he knew, to leave himself open and vulnerable in their territory. However, he wasn't real worried about them. They weren't responsible for what had happened down in the muddy farm yard.

He set his jaw and swung his gaze toward the lights of the house.

A dialogue was in order.

 

 

 

 

 

There wasn't enough room behind the pure white hot rage for words so when Dean passed the threshold, he sought only the crack of a fist against bone.

It would clear his head.

Yueller barely had time to get out of his seat before Dean's swing sent him reeling into back into and over it with a crash.

"That's better."

He cracked his knuckles before going in again.

Yueller was on his feet. Grabbing Dean's approaching fist by the wrist, he used Dean’s own momentum to shove him down and hard into the couch. Dean wrenched himself into a roll, falling off the sofa and taking Yueller with him, they shattered the thick coffee table, sending all the papers scattered on top of it flying in all directions. The Captain unfortunately landed on top but Dean used the moment to twist around and get the edge of his elbow up hard in one sharp strike under the man’s chin. He did it three more times, swiftly in a row.

He felt victory loom when Yueller’s grip on him suddenly slackened.

Ready to do it again and again, he felt hands on him, wrenching him up by the shoulders. Struggling to cast another blow that met with empty air, he was forced unsteadily to his feet before he was shoved violently against the wall. He gasped, trying to draw back in some of the air that was knocked out of his lungs, his hands going to his neck when something slid flat and unyielding under his chin

“Now, now…” Keens said softly, the intensity in his eyes betraying the calm tone in his voice. “What exactly is the problem here?”

The man was keeping Dean pinned with the flat end of a rifle jammed painfully against the throat. Dean's face was throbbing, red hot and enraged. His words came forced through a constricted windpipe.

"T-That's my question, you son of a bitch! Where's Sam!"

Yueller was slowly picking himself up out of the wreckage of the table. He touched his bloody lip and examined the rest of his face with a careful hand.

“Y--You were supposed to keep an eye on your bait Dean, not just let the Walkers go on and take it—“

“No! It wasn't a Walker out there that did that!” Dean felt Keens slide a little backwards with the force he strained against him, the rifle choking him until he started seeing white spots explode in front of his eyes. “I’m, I’m gonna _kill you_ —“

“Give it your best shot Dean.” Yueller offered, his smile turning ugly.

A loud abrupt noise silenced them all. It was a knock.

It came from the front door. Dean watched Yueller quickly take account of everyone that he knew would be capable of doing such a thing. They were all standing in the same room with him. Panting, Dean tore his gaze back at the door, surging all his strength against the firearm pinning him to the wall.

“Sammy!”

The knock came again, even louder this time.

“Sam!”

Keens released his grip on Dean, letting him trip over himself to get to the door. His hand was on the latch and ripping the door open before he had time to wonder if he should be cautious. Cold air flooded into the room like water, crisp and biting. Only the black night outside answered him.

There was no one there.

"Sam!" Dean called out, his breath clouding in the damp air.

"Shut that door." Yueller ordered in a strange voice, stumbling when he tried to move to do it himself. "Shut it!"

Dean didn't listen. He took a tentative step out onto the porch, his eyes scanning the barn and then the wide empty expanse of dark fields beyond. Something stood out in the distance. Dean's eyes widened on the unmistakable shape of his brother. Without thinking he took off down the slope.

"Hey!" He called out, expecting Sam to react. Turn his way. Yell back. Anything.

Dean skidded to a halt when he got about a meter from him, heart thudding in his chest. Something finally told him to be wary. There was a strange set to his brother’s body, his posture was too rigid and his gaze too steady. After a few moments, Dean realized Sam’s boots weren’t touching the mud. He was hovering right above it by a good few inches.

"What the--"

A slow fractured smile crept across Sam's face.

In the way that Sam twitched, the unnatural cadence of his breathing fogging the night air, Dean knew exactly what this was. He knew precisely after so many years of walking in the dark what a possession looked like. Ghost, demon or demigod, the results were always the same. Dean fought the urge to grab his brother by the shoulders and shake loose what had settled down inside of him.

"Let me guess?" Dean asked carefully. “N-No-Noqoìlpi?”

The thing burning inside Sam snorted as though amused.

_Do not speak my name._

It was not Sam's voice scraping through strained vocal cords.

_Your white tongue twists it into the talk of a Łééchąą'í._

Dean wasn’t sure what the hell a Łééchąą'í was but he was positive it wasn’t complimentary. All the various ways to try to communicate with a God came to mind. Unfortunately, Dean's memory drew up nothing but songs that doubled as worship. He had no idea what he should say even if he came up with the right sentiment anyway. He wasn't sure if this thing wanted him to be thankful, apologetic, or reverent. All he really wanted to be was belligerent.

It turned out he didn’t have to wait around for the perfect thing to come to mind.

This is a vessel. Sam held up his hand and studied it as though he were seeing it for the first time. He sneered in displeasure. _He can deliver my words._

“I’m right here.” Dean put his arms out in a tired supplication. “I’m listening.”

_What has been committed was a sin. Even if you invite every morning with prayer, you cannot unmake this._

“A wager right?” Dean asked stepping forward. “They made one with you and they lost?”

Eyes that were not his brother's met his gaze.

_They. And those who serve them_

Serve? Dean felt cold when he realized that meant him. The god was speaking faster now, his hatred contorting Sam's face.

_You who hold maps with no direction. This trail will choke you._

Dean realized he was trembling.

_Wandering without end._

“W-what?”

A hand reached out, low and towards Dean’s chest. Level with his heart.

_A debt is due._

Dean felt his body freeze before the hand even touched him. His muscles constricting and pulling painfully out of place. He felt his heart stutter, the presence of the being growing closer and making his blood pump much too fast, each beat unreadable through the next, the stammer of its racing rhythm making him fall gasping to his knees. He could feel some side of himself sliding away, like something was tugging at his own shadow. Crossing his arms across his chest he struggled to stay upright on his knees. He fought to look up into Sam's face, his brother's eyes slightly reflecting in the cabin’s lamps with a stark blue animal eye shine.

Whatever it was that it was being steadily pulled free, felt like it was ripping away like a second skin. In his agony, Dean appealed to the only person that could possibly help him.

"Sam!"

Dean gasped.

“P-Please—“

His vision was going white.

“S-Stop—“

Incredibly, the horrible sensation abruptly halted. The sickening feel of having his skin pulled away from him recoiled, snapping back with gut wrenching force. He reeled backwards with the blow, fighting to stay upright and conscious when his vision threatened to waver again. Dean struggled from one knee to a stand.

"S-Sam?"

There was a deep low sound, like something enraged. Dean felt the ground under his hands thud and tremble like an earthquake. Sam's face grew brighter, as if the light that settled onto it was collecting in on itself, the stark blue shine to his eyes started to saturate into a deep boil of red. A soundless boom rippled through the ground under Dean again, almost knocking him backwards. When he looked back to his brother, he blinked back his amazement. Something was happening, something was changing...

The strange cast to Sam's eyes was quickly fading, his gaze suddenly back to the dull normal color of a human being. The rapid departure left Sam blinking and dazed. His face was too pale, lids fluttering, limbs trembling with exhaustion.

"Sammy? Y--You in there?" Dean tried.

He wasn't making any noise.

Dean took in huge gulps of air, feeling the weight lift from his chest and sensation return to his numb limbs. He knew there were some differences in possession. These things filled you up like electricity to a light bulb, and if there was too much juice it could make the fragile glass shell explode.

"Hey?" Dean grabbed at Sam's shoulder, hoping to jar him. His brother stared past him as though he didn't exist. "Hey, it's me!"

Dean started to move before Sam's eyes rolled up into his head and he fell to his knees. They crashed together on the frozen ground, Dean struggling beneath his brother's dead weight. Carefully Dean laid him down flat. A thin trickle of bright blood trailed down from Sam's nose.

"Your brother.”

It was Yueller. Dean looked up over his shoulder at him. He didn’t know when the Captain had left the warded house to stand beside them.

“He drove it away.”

“Hey! Hey!" Dean shook Sam roughly, his hand on his brother's throat. "Don't think I gotta pulse here!"

Yueller crouched down beside him, shoving Dean out of his way. He was swiftly and expertly checking Sam's wrist, his eyes, his airway.

“Do something Yueller.” Dean said. “Do something or I’ll—“

“You’ll do what?” Yueller sneered, his bruised face shifted back into his ready smile. He spoke to Keens over his shoulder. “Get me my bag.”

Keens moved wordlessly to comply.

"Thorazine is still in him." Yueller explained, hastily undoing Sam's shirt. "His heart's stopped."

Dean slammed his fist into the hard ground to keep it from landing in the man's face. Yueller had begun compressions.

"If that thing killed him, I swear to god--" Dean began.

Keens was already back from the house, his arms full with the Captain's canvas bag. He tossed it to him before even stopping. Yueller paused to catch it and pulled it open. He yanked out a plastic packet, and ripped the foil cover off of it.

“It’s interesting Dean.” Keens said over them as he observed. “You never mentioned that your brother was a hypersensitive.”

“What? No? He’s-He’s not... he’s just... Sam? Come on talk to me here!"

Yueller was prepping a large hypodermic needle, flicking the plastic canister.

"Adrenaline. This'll get him going again." Yueller explained. Without preemption or grace, he positioned it directly over Sam's chest and thrust down hard.

Dean felt sick as he heard the thud of it entering his brother's skin. He could barely watch Yueller slowly depress the plunger. Sam didn't react, eyes closed, lips the same color as his face.

"Give him a minute.” Yueller slipped a stethoscope over Sam’s chest while laying a finger across the artery at the side of his neck.

“A minute?” Dean watched on anxiously. “I thought you said that stuff would—

Sam’s back suddenly arched, his head slamming back into the ground, suckin air in hard like he’d just surfaced from being held under water.

Startled, Dean fell backwards. “Shit—“

Yueller checked Sam’s eyes as he felt his wrist, glancing at his watch to time the battered body’s function.

He gave Dean a wink.

“Just like magic.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dean watched them move around the room.

It was Johnson’s bedroom once not so very long ago. It was Yueller’s now, picked for his own probably because of its lack of large windows and the solid bed. A place to bunk down. Storage. An office. A strong hold. In Yueller’s mind the room was a lot of things. And now it was where they were keeping Sam. His brother was resting easy for now. The mud was drying on his clothes, one gray smear of it ran along his cheek.

Keens was watching Yueller collecting what was his own and putting it away in another canvas sack. Clearing the room of everything in it. This place had provided its usefulness. It was time to move on. And thanks to his brother, it was safe to move through the night without the attention of the thing they had angered out there in the desert. It wasn’t a large window of time, but it was large enough to make an exit.

The god needed as much time as Sam did to come back to itself. Maybe even more considering how Sam had pushed it out. Dislodged it snarling and red eyed. Dean didn’t need to tell them it was time to go. Keens was the one who seemed to know the effect Sam had had on their enemy. Dean just wondered what the opposite effect might happen to be.

Dean thought he deserved its fury.

These men had done it. They had called up something that the natives out west had aptly named He Who Wins Men. Something that liked to gamble with whatever mortal that dared.

For material things. For jewelry. For souls.

“May I speak to you Dean?” Keens asked as he regarded him leaning in the doorway.

Dean watched Yueller silently continue to pack his things. He looked over at his sleeping brother, the small electrode clipped to his fingertip monitoring his strong and steady heartbeat.

He sighed.

“Since you asked so nicely.” Dean said under his breath.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"What do you want?”

They were back in the library that Keens had made his room out of. Dean looked over his shoulder across the hall towards the room in which he’d left his brother. Sam was safe for now. Something about the house warded off just about everything thrown at it so far, and Dean wasn’t too worried about Yueller.

Yueller was quieter. Spooked. Probably never saw a demigod channel through living flesh before. Dean chuckled to himself. Probably didn’t like seeing the preview that Noqoìlpi had given him about just how a soul would be taken. Like Dean’s almost was. He found himself absently rubbing at his chest where it still burned. He’d do a hell of a lot not to ever have to go through that again.

“The wager was for four.” Keens simply said as he put a few of his belongings into a bag. “One of our men was taken right off. We barely escaped with our own lives.”

“I bet.” Dean cleared his throat at the badly used and unintended pun.

“And then Jack went and did away with dear old Edwards.” Keens shook his head and drew a thumb across his brow. “I assure you I would have stepped in and done something about that but when that man has his head stuck on something—“

“What are you talking about?” Dean demanded. “How does this have anything to do with me?”

“Son,” Keens sat back down in the over stuffed chair he’d found to use at his table. “You were bound to our wager the first time you killed for us. That Skin Walker? Don’t ask me exactly how. I’ve read all there is to know, I think it may have something to do with Noqoìlpi sending his own to collect what He is due--”

“But I wasn’t even there, I wasn’t even there to make any wager—

“As we all saw, it apparently doesn’t matter to Noqoìlpi whether you were there or not.” Keens said shortly. “Noqoìlpi wants four men. Their insides anyway. He’s already got one as I said. Only three more to go.”

Dean’s hand returned to his chest.

“What I find so interesting is how He was drawn to your brother like that.” Keens studied a book before sliding it into the bag with the others. “Would have killed him if Jack hadn’t stepped in.”

“But it didn’t.”

“But it will.” Keens looked at him squarely. “Do you want this for your brother Dean? Do you want him to run like we do until we find that little loop hole that will end all of this? Do you really want to risk his life along with yours?”

Dean fell back and sat numbly in the chair behind him.

“You think Johnny Law is bad,” Keens made a low whistle of appreciation. “This thing is a fine hunter. Ends up finding us just about wherever we turn out. No matter how fast we run. Or how deep we go.”

“I’ll leave.” Dean said almost himself. “I’ll just walk out of here, make my own way.”

Keens sighed shortly.

“You’ll find another aspect of the wager, and our forfeiture of what was due is that we are indeed, stuck in something one might call a rut.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll find yourself extremely susceptible all alone Dean.”

“I don’t mind that idea as much as you maybe think I would.”

“How about just plain suicide then?”

Dean felt himself go quiet.

“There’s only one reason this thing hasn’t taken each and every one of us and ripped us limb from limb.”

Keens reached into his army jacket and pulled out something from its inner pocket. It was about the size of his palm and smooth and rounded.

There it was. The turquoise stone. The talisman.

Dean felt himself frown. This is what they took from Noqoìlpi. They had tricked the Trickster Himself. No wonder the thing was so pissed off. Not only did it get none of the souls promised, the bastards had taken off with its stone.

“With us you have something of a fighting chance.” Keens rolled the stone thoughtfully between his fingertips. “Alone, your lifespan drastically decreases.”

“Why didn’t Yueller tell me? Why go through all of this bullshit if—if this makes me your whipping boy already?”

“Look Dean, I personally don’t share Jack’s fervor over the condition of your allegiance? I personally don’t care one way or another how you listen to us, just as long as you listen. Jack wants your loyalty, all I require is your compliance.”

“Looks like you’ve got it.” Dean growled. They’d done more than forced his hand, they’d almost cosmically arranged it.

“Come with us.” Keens smiled gently. “Come on now, we aren’t that bad?”

"Ditch Sam and go play war with you? Kinda doesn't have the same draw, pal."

“Then tell me about this other choice you have?" Keens sighed. “I for one, am dying to hear it.”

Dean swallowed and thought how bad he’d like to hear it too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"According to suicide statistics, Monday is the favored day for self-destruction."

Dean read a loud from the old magazine. He checked his watch. Figured it'd be a Monday. Sam's eyes moved gently beneath their lids, the slow rise of the sun through the narrow windows cutting pale beams across his face.

"Heh, and check this out. TomKat's baby suspected to be a clone."

He heard Sam's breathing change from sleeping to waking.

"River Phoenix dates Gilda Radner in afterlife." He whistled. "Whatever."

Sam stirred weakly with a groan. Dean flipped the magazine closed and tossed it aside.

"How ya feelin?"

Sam made a small sound in his throat.

"Pretty rough night last night, Sammy. Suggest you stay off your feet for a while."

Dazed, Sam reached up to rub at his eyes and halted. Blinking through the haze of his troubled sleep, his brows knotted when he realized he was stopped short. He tugged in confusion at the metal handcuff binding his wrist to the rusted metal frame of the bedpost.

"Dean?" He croaked weakly.

Dean pointed to the night table beside the bed.

"There's water and plenty of it. Not sure how up you are for eating but I found some edible stuff. Just hope it don't kill ya. Oh and this...." He held up a plastic bedpan and placed it on the bed with a small grin. "....in case of emergency."

Sam's chest began to heave slightly, his throat working as he tried to speak. Blearily, he shifted on the bed.

"W-What the hell is going on?" He swallowed.

"Ain't it obvious? I'm leaving...."

Sam yanked sudden and hard on the metal trapping his wrist, steel scraping noisily against the rusted iron.

"....and you're not."

"Dean." Sam's voice was raspy and thick with misuse but Dean could still hear the anger simmering beneath it. "Let me go. Now."

"Oh, case ya get bored?" Dean held up one of the yellowed, tattered magazines. "Let's see there's National Geographic, Sports Weekly, oh and Classic Playboy bless the old man. Bettie Mae Page!" He whistled and picked up the stack of magazines, setting them on the night table.

"Dean, this isn't funny." Sam growled.

"I know it's not, believe me." Dean spread his hands, his face suddenly serious. "And I'm sorry, I am. But I can't have you following me, Sam."

Dean shrugged into the green nylon jacket given to him by Yueller. He had a green bag too, unzipped and still not packed with all the things he'd been ordered to fill it with. He tried to ignore Sam staring at him and the military canvas with undisguised disbelief.

"What's going on? Talk to me."

"I figure the time it will take you to find a way out of those handcuffs'll be about three hours or so. By then we'll be halfway to who knows. Don't try to track us, you won't be able to."

He set down his leather key ring on the table with a clank.

"Take my car, Sam. I want you to take it and get the hell outta dodge."

"Dean." Sam shook his head with a brief, infuriated chuckle. "No way."

Taking a deep breath, Dean laid down his phone next to the car keys.

"Look, you're just gonna have to trust me, ok?"

Dean decided he did not want to see the look his brother gave him after saying that ever again. Sam's muscles were straining weakly against the binds, trying to lift himself up. Sam froze when he heard Yueller's voice.

"Dean! Get a move on!"

"No. Look, you can't just--" Sam spoke calmly, a sure sign he was panicked.

"I can do whatever I want. Just do what I told you." Dean heard his temper flare.

A pause. Silence from Sam, hot and smoldering in the air. Dean tried to diffuse it, focusing on his bag and gathering what he needed.

"What did they do to you?" Sam asked quietly.

Dean pretended not to hear him.

Sam was looking over Dean's shoulder at the men that waited behind him. His anger and confusion mixing into something else, something hurt and lost.

“What did you do to him!” Sam shouted.

“They didn’t do anything to me.” Dean said softly. He stopped himself from wondering if that was really true.

“Dean wait, just wait--”

Sam made to grab at him and didn’t stop when Yueller impatiently shifted the rifle that sat at rest against his knee.

“Whatever they did, we can work it out! We can figure something out! Dean just listen to me—"

Dean felt the rifle nudge him hard in the shoulder.

"Let’s go.” Yueller told him.

He looked hard into his brother's eyes.

“Just stay far away from me Sam, you get me?”

“Dean no, please just listen to me—

“No! You listen to me.”

Sam stared at him hard, his jaw working.

“It’ll kill you Sammy.”

Dean got up and turned around.

"Dean!"

He shut the door behind him.

"Dean!"

He had to just leave, put one foot in front of the other. Leave Sam's enraged shouts. Cursing Yueller and Keens. Calling out his name. Pleading with him to come back.

The morning hadn't warmed up from the night just yet. The van that had pulled up in front of the house was idling noisily, the exhaust billowing its fog up into the pale yellow stain of the approaching sun. Dean watched the side door of the battered van rattle open. The thing was packed to filled. Firearms. Boxes of ammo. Stacks of bound books. But there was one empty seat back there and it was for him.

"Could have just left a note."

Keens voice wasn't mocking him but there was a joke in it somewhere. The man was right. Dean could have spared his brother some of that. The thing was that Dean wanted to see him one more time. See him awake.

“You didn’t have to do all that.” Keens said somewhere behind him.

“Yes I did.”

tbc


	8. Chapter 8

They hadn't stopped driving all day long.

Dean shifted uncomfortably in the neatly packed network of their supplies. Everything was so precisely placed that nothing jarred even when they began to travel over unpaved roads. Cramped as he was in their design, he could only see glimpses of the road through the windshield ahead.

There were half a dozen things or more he could see that were easily within his unsupervised reach. All of them in some variation could have brought the van to a screeching halt. A few of them could have destroyed it completely. But then what? A strange and terrible sensation of claustrophobia that had nothing to do with his tight dark confines settled down around him, growing more solid mile after long mile. He undid the chafing tight seatbelt and tried to even out his breathing in long slow exhales. Any conversation stayed in the front seat and did not include him. He wondered after the first hard day of driving when and if they would ever pull over for anything at all. They eventually did at an abandoned shoulder of the road turned into a very brief rest stop. Yueller had quickly stopped him from walking anywhere near the trees and told him to unzip right where he was.

"Where’s the trust fellas?" Dean muttered.

Dean could still feel the van’s sliding door at his back while he did his business. So this was what the leash was going to be like from now on. Nice, tight and short.

When he was finished, he was given another water bottle and informed he wouldn’t get another until night fall. The last bottle had been clean at least as far as his tongue could determine. In transit, hydration was more important than the risk of being drugged out of his mind anyway. He wondered just exactly where nightfall would take them. He didn't see them as the motel type. Hunters, amateur or no, were like strays. They knew where to find shelter, each with their own singular maps of the country dotted with scattered dwellings. No hunter saw this land in the same way. Refuge could be taken where it was not offered.

Dean hoped the same held true for this small military contingent. Dean closed his eyes, pressing his knuckles into his forehead. His legs were asleep, blood tingling through every nerve. He tried hard not to think of Sam. He knew that it would have taken probably longer than three hours with what had been left around for him to get free. But he knew his brother would do it. And he knew his brother wouldn’t listen to a word he’d said.

That was why Dean had left his phone behind.

He decided to count on it.

 

 

 

 

 

The first house they stopped in they only stayed one night.

It was a halfway point, a shelter of sorts not meant for survival in the long term. Just a wall between them and the wind and a place to bunk down. Dean quickly learned he was expected to do all of the loading and unloading of the van. By the second night and the second house he did it before Yueller could take the metal flashlight to the back of his knee.

Frustrating as it was, Dean found playing along made life easier for the duration.

The largest frustration was the lack of information. The grand scheme of things was hidden from him, any information pertaining to a course of action or solution was not part of their dialogue with him. He was given orders and not expected to ask questions. At this stage in the game, if playing the backseat lackey meant saving him a fisted lecture from either of his cohorts, it was a rationalization he could put up with. Before the week ended they were in another location.

To Dean's surprise, this one had a front desk.

Abandoned, cracked and coated with mold, it gave their new haven an almost luxurious feel despite its decay. Some miles outside the South Dakota border they had stopped at the small shut up hotel. Two floors, more like a bed and breakfast for anyone bothering to spend the night in the vast tourist free wasteland of the plains. Whatever anyone might have bothered to take the trip out here for had fallen either to obscurity or the Wal-marts. Judging from the state of the carpet and the pattern on the wall paper, its maintenance had been neatly forgotten decades ago. It was probably condemned. Dean noted the barred windows and spray painted boarded exterior. The scattering of broken bottles and used condoms on the floor of the ancient lobby suggested it was still used at one time or another for other means.

"Check in at the Tetanus Motel?" Dean sighed as he hefted the first round of duffel bags up the stairs.

Yueller and Keens seemed familiar with it. He heard them discuss that this stay was for an entire fifteen days. Like most run down places in the middle of no where it had dead electricity, ancient plumbing and an over grown yard that was turning into a forest.

Dean was designated parameters and a bunk and then left to his own devices.

Unfortunately, his devices fell woefully short of anything that wasn’t one of Yueller’s or Keens’ immediate concerns; securing the compound and settling in. As he climbed the free standing concrete inlaid steps once again with two heavy buckets filled with rancid pool water, he ignored the sweat staining the front of his shirt. Keens decided that even with the lack of plumbing he’d make his own makeshift version by filling his own toilet tanks with what was available.

Dean figured he could do this. He didn’t have to grin, but he could bear it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

His day had been so exhausting that when Dean finally set down his last crate and found his bunk, he found himself particularly grateful for his next issued bottle of fluids.

The many trips up and down the complex’s three stories carrying industrial sized plastic jugs of water had left his arms limp and his body wasted. He quickly unscrewed the cap of the bottle handed to him and started to down it as fast as possible. But the first swig made him spit it back out onto the floor. It was bitter on his tongue. If he had bothered to look at the plastic bottle itself he would have noticed it was slightly cloudy, grains of some fine dust settled down onto its bottom.

“No.” He said evenly to Keens who was watching him with interest. “Not any more. Sir.”

“Don’t make a fuss son, you know I’m a parade in the sunshine compared to Jack." His smile was genuine. "No offense meant to the man but he just doesn’t take to your outbursts as well as I do.”

“Forget it, I’m not drinking any more of this shit.” Dean growled, tossing the water aside and letting it drain rapidly all over the floor. “What are you going to do about it? Shoot me?”

Keens smiled just a little bit. “I was hoping your medication could be done in a civilized manner with the water, but if you insist?”

Dean stepped backwards, unsure of what was going to happen next. Keens simply raised his hand.

Before Dean could react, he lay twitching on the floor, staring up at the ceiling. Two metal barbs hooked into his skin through his damp green T-shirt, the surges of electricity roaring through his body and making him involuntarily seize and stiffen.

“Now we have to go ahead and do it the hard way.” Keens said from above him.

Dean’s eyes stuttered in a blink, his back violently arching when a new flow of sizzling jolts of energy pumped through him.

“It’s good we have a nice solid week. No Skin Walkers. No Sam Winchester. Not a thing to distract us at all.” Keens sighed. “I was telling Jack before, I think it's about time we got some real work done.”

Dean would have reminded him of all that work that had been done back on that ranch, but he was too busy trying not to bite off his own tongue.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It had taken an entire week to get to this point.

An entire week filled with hours of being hooked up to that fucking machine. Dean was really damn tired of Keens assuring him that it really wasn’t torture.

Yueller spent quite a bit of time making sure every contact was just right. He dabbed the places the connections would be placed carefully with alcohol first. He’d straighten out his chair and make sure he was comfortable before he even plugged the thing in. Then Yueller got to talking. It always started with a kind of pep talk first.

"Now before we begin today I wanna level with ya son."

Dean breathed in and out against the rubber bit between his teeth, waiting.

"I know we've done this before. Maybe you're even thinkin it's a mite....tolerable for lack of a better word. Don't blame you for setting yourself up it’s only natural. After all, learning is all about just getting used to things. Sooner or later though it boils down to what a man will or will not endure. Now I bet you're sayin to yerself, what's a few hundred white hot milliamps coursin through my noggin’ every now and again? Not so bad if I shut my mind off, play along and go with? Hell, this'll all turn into just another one of life's necessary hardships." Yueller stopped to look Dean dead in the eye. "I’d like to discourage you from such logic."

Dean’s mouth worked uncomfortably behind the gag. Yueller continued, hands folded in front of him.

"After tonight you'll think, so what? A few singed hairs and a jumpy heart, no sweat. Have you taken a look at yourself? Your arms and chest are starting to scab real nice with the burns. After a few more times and they’ll start to scar. After session eight or nine, you'll start havin' some memory loss, you might even black out once or twice. The tics'll start showin after that. Hell, knowing you we'll probably have to do this another….oh, I’d say… five more days before you really get the picture. Do you understand what I mean by all this, Dean?"

Dean worked his hands where they had been strapped firmly to the forearms of the heavy wooden chair he’d been placed in.

"This is something you'll want to avoid. Until you learn our methods, our codes and truly believe them, all you'll get is this."

Dean stoically watched him prep the machine.

“Let’s start on a low setting.”

Dean felt the heat growing under his skin as he heard the slow hum of the charger. It exploded suddenly and violently moving his muscles without his command, stopping his lungs and sending his heart into involuntary panic. His teeth were clenched and locked on the black rubber bit between his jaws, agonizingly tight.

"Again."

He heard himself make a strained noise, muffled and desperate behind the gag.

"And again."

His vision began to go pale around the edges.

“Go ahead.” Yueller offered. "Take a breath."

The world was suddenly still again. Dean felt as though he'd just run a mile in the desert. Cold sweat prickled his pale skin, stomach churning at the acrid burning smell.

"Do I make myself clear?"

Dean tried to nod.

He attempted to listen to Yueller talk between the bursts of pain behind his eyes. Eventually the lecture stopped and the gag was removed for the second phase of their exercise. It was implemented, Dean surmised, to examine just how closely he was retaining his new set of rules. These new rules manifested themselves in the new mantra and handbook, all composed and written by Yueller himself. Dean was punished when he didn’t respond. He was punished if his response was incorrect. He was punished if he didn’t respond quickly enough.

When it was over, it always followed with an entire bottle of dosed water that they watched him drink carefully. It left him in a permanent daze, unwilling to do or resist anything. All he wanted to do was sleep but they wouldn’t even allow him that. Dean knew deep down that no matter what Yueller said that every single one of his answers were all a cover. He knew that every time he obeyed them that it was so he could bide his time. Wait it out. Figure out just exactly how to get out of their hands and out from under the curse they’d pulled him into. He’d done a lot of things to save his own life. This was just another one of them.

By the eighth day of his sessions he started dreaming about Yueller’s lectures. He had woken up in a cold sweat on his sleeping bag, expecting his arms and body to be restrained. The simple sight of the machine had started to provoke a reaction out of him. The sight of Yueller waiting did the same. He found himself responding faster to the carefully memorized phrases. Sometimes he started to say them before he had even thought about it at all. The punishments became less frequent. The reward of their absence started to become Dean’s one and only goal as soon as he was seated and prepared. To make the sessions end faster he was required to do well. To do well he had to listen and behave more carefully than he ever imagined he was capable of.

When they left that house and were on the road once again, Dean slept through it and his handlers didn’t wake him even once. He came to having no idea how long or far they had traveled.

After the van doors rattled open to a cold night outside he wordlessly began to unload and methodically place everything required into another empty house. He made sure to place all items separately in sections on the wooden floor.

It was only after he’d finished that he realized he had never been told to do it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was another boarded up place of by gone leisure.

Dean wondered why his keepers seemed to gravitate to the derelict and previously opulent. This one looked like it could have been some kind of country club. It would explain the massive amount of sloped forest that surrounded it. It sat in clumps, oddly sectioned off as if it had once been mowed down to a perfect regulation golf course. Not anymore. The ponds were all thick with monster green and the brambles that choked the hedges made the forest a nasty place to take a stroll in.

When the last box had been stowed in the space designated as storage, Dean found himself standing listless but ready in the empty lobby, waiting for someone to do something with him.

Keens was starting a fire in the old dusty fireplace.

“Come sit down over here Dean.” He gestured to an over stuffed chair that sat beside his. “I want to show you something.”

Dean nodded in his dull haze. “Yes, sir.”

Keens spread out a map on the low table that sat before them, poking the crackle and hiss of the logs he'd set to slowly catch. Curls of newspaper licked hungrily under the wood, chemicals in the paper turning the pin points of flame into strange greens and bizarre blues. The map looked new but it had been well handled, smudged with finger prints and folded and refolded so often that the creases were worn down to fragile lines, liable to tear if it was tugged too roughly.

"Have you ever been down to Window Rock, son?"

The name sounded familiar in that way that all those southwestern places did. Everything was shaped into one mind boggling sculpture after another out there. All within as many colors than the desert sky that seeped into everything after the sun dipped below the horizon. Some things were named for the tourists. Some were names taken off what the natives had dubbed it in the first place. Some ended up being a hybrid of both.

"It's the administrative Capitol and administrative center of the Navajo nation." Keens finger found it easily on the Arizona border. There wasn't much else around it besides more sand. "They also call it Ni’ 'Alníi’gi. That means 'Center of the Earth'."

Dean looked down at the splay of photographs that had been spread out over the map. A towering outcrop of sandrock, about 200 feet of it, with a large hole weathered into the center. Like a window. The pictures weren't exactly like a picture one would take of a thing they were trying to capture for a slide show later on. They were partial and disjointed, showing the rock formation at odd angles. The camera seemed to hide the aspects of it which had made it something of note amongst a never ending landscape of oddities. The shots were almost clinical.

Keens suddenly blocked his view of the closest and most impressive of the formation. Someone had stood directly underneath it, and looked right up almost into the face of the sun. Dean blinked down at the round blue stone that had been placed on top of the photograph.

“Do you want to hold it?” Keens asked. “I understand the desire, I do.”

Dean stared at the smooth blue surface and swallowed. The strange thing was, he did want to touch it. He had never had the urge before, but now he found it almost irresistible. The contours of its mass seemed like they would be supple and pleasing to trace. The pale color was suddenly a fascination as to what it would look like held closer to the firelight. Looking back up at Keens uncertainly, Dean reached out, touching his fingertips to its cool smooth surface. It was heavier than it appeared as he weighed it gently in his palm. He could feel something whispering, radiating down over his skin, up along each of his fingers and creeping up his wrist. It felt warm and soothing, like dipping your arm elbow deep into hot fragrant bathwater when you were cold.

“Close your hand around it.” Keens tone shifted from causal, to an order.

Dean hesitated.

“Do it.” He chided.

Dean obeyed.

As soon as he made a fist he heard himself sigh. The vague tingling suddenly enveloped and saturated him completely. Gasping, he felt the back of his chair as he slumped backwards, his eyes clouding and tunneling to almost nothing. Thinking he was about to pass out, he was shocked to see his vision return clear. Bright and clear. Too bright.

It was a cloudless sky that spanned over head for miles and miles. The craggy red earth hissing with the wind that moved forever across its surface. There was someone standing off in the simmering distance. The heat warping the shape as the figure moved closer. The mirage of glimmering liquid mercury pools of water forming and dissolving at its feet. Dean felt the stone burning in his hand, too hot, searing through his skin, grinding against bone, charring what it touched into ash—

He dropped it.

When his eyes opened again, he was right back in front of the crackling fireplace. The heat of the flames weak compared to the flood that warmed his flesh. He stared at the stone where he had dropped it on the floor. With a small bit of wonder, he examined his unharmed hand.

Keens easily picked it up.

"You may understand now our reluctance in parting with it.”

“B-But-“ Dean was partially still lost in the flash of the vision. The desert air still lingered, the feel of the red grit of the sand scoured walls still under his fingertips. “It’s- It’s not yours, that Noqoìlpi thing, it won’t stop looking for it—“

"That has been our dilemma hasn’t it.” Keens sighed. “But that might change soon.”

Dean’s gaze flickered back and forth from the man’s face and the stone in his hand.

“Don’t you think that it’s a strange thing that something like a god would need anything at all?”

Dean didn’t think much of anything was strange but he couldn’t form a coherent sentence of his thoughts in his head so he stayed quiet.

“It would lead one to believe that if gods have needs, they might share a few other traits with us lesser beings that walk down around their earth.”

“You want to kill it.” Dean heard himself say.

Keens smiled broadly at him and nodded. “Yes, we would like that very much.”

Dean looked back down at the dozens of photographs that the natives had deemed the center of the Earth. Their Earth. Maybe Noqoìlpi’s too. Keens was planning something. Something bigger than their last blundering foray into magic and the flip side. Dean felt something tug at his gut, a sense of foreboding at just what these men thought they might be capable of.

Yueller appeared at the bottom of the creaking stairs.

Dean automatically stood.

“Turn in Dean, room at the end of the hall is yours.”

Dean heard himself reply, not even wondering anymore at how his mind had taken over his mouth. He walked up the stairs slowly, seeing the small short hall and the open door with his gear sitting inside of it.

Automatically he made to close the door but he stopped himself before Yueller heard or saw him do it. It wasn’t allowed. It was a part of the rules. Rolling out the deep weather sleeping bag, he tiredly lay down on top of it and closed his eyes. With a deep sleepy sigh he folded his arms behind his head and crossed his ankles. He could still see that clear bright blue sky. And he could still see the steady approach of whatever it was that caught sight of him looking out over the glare of the painted desert.

Dean was starting to get a small idea of just how exactly the desert god was finding his new friends so fast and so often.

It sure didn’t have a damn thing to do with being a fine hunter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day he felt even more tired than he usually did.

He wasn’t sure if it was the strange contact with the rock he’d had the night before or his disturbed sleeping patterns. Maybe it was the endless supply of drugs that they were pumping into his system. All he knew was that the simplest tasks had now become difficult.

"Dean?"

He had been sitting quietly in the dark living room staring into the fireplace and trying to keep his eyes open. They had caught him dozing a few times and he'd been woken up unpleasantly with the flat end of a rifle. He wasn't sure what else they expected but he no longer questioned their expectations these days.

Dean just did what he always tried to do best. Run with it.

"Y-Yes, sir." Dean stood up stiffly, unaware he had been sitting in the same position for quite that long.

"One of our cameras in down," Yueller said as he tapped on one of their laptops. "Number 4."

He blinked his eyes that were dry from sitting so close to the flames. They burned and watered a little. Glancing down at his wrist, he realized he had never put his watch back on after his 5 minutes of allotted time in the shower. He didn't know what time it was but he didn't want to ask just in case the benign question shifted Yueller from his focus. Dean had learned little by little what actions caused the Captain to drop everything in order to show Dean just exactly how it should be done. And if the new recruit didn’t get it and get it good, there was always extra time for more reconditioning on the machine.

“I want you to go out there and check it out.”

Dean felt himself nodding as he took one look at the soft nylon jacket and decided it made too much noise when he moved. It could be nothing of course. Faulty wire. A burst of wind and a bad signal.

However, it could also mean that something had caught up with them once again. The desert god may be at this moment sending out its scouts in front of it, checking out the lay of the land before arriving itself. Yueller didn’t say a thing when Dean approached the white plastic latched chest they kept their replenished supplies in. He gathered in small pinches what he needed and carefully pushed the ingredients one by one into a small leather sachet.

What he had used on one Skin Walker would work again as long as he didn’t stumble over any of his words. Dean grinned grimly to himself as he palmed the totem before pushing it down into his front pocket. Just as good as a hand grenade given the right inflection of just the right syllables. Just a bag of smelly dirt if he said everything right but to the wrong target. He’d just have to concentrate hard that was all. He’d just have to do his best. Like Captain Yueller always said: Only the dead have seen the end of war. Dean was pretty sure the man hadn’t came up with that himself. Most of his lectures and rules seemed like a conglomeration of much wiser and older people. Probably mostly dead guys. But Dean wasn’t dead yet and he didn’t plan to be anytime soon. Besides, he always made sure he had some decent backup on hand just in case Plan A blew up in his face.

Dean felt Yueller watch him as he slowly loaded the shotgun. For a moment, he visualized turning the double barrels right at the center of the man’s chest and blasting a hole so wide that he could see right through to the other side. The maniacal urge flickered and vanished as Yueller pulled out a long saw-toothed blade from his belt. He held it out to Dean, blade first.

He closed his hand around the cold sharpened metal and flipped it so the hard rubber handle smacked into the palm of his hand.

“You have 30 minutes to report.”

Sliding the knife down through his belt, Dean answered as required.

“Yes, sir.”

 

 

 

 

 

Dean knew he should be shivering when the wind picked up but his body seemed to be burning almost with a fever, the elements not affecting him as they rightfully should.

He knew it was what whatever it was that diluted his food and drink. It did things other than keep him calm, non confrontational and almost dulled to the point of listlessness. At least he thought it had. Out here in the woods he felt suddenly hyperaware to everything around him. It was almost the sensation of delirium, everything painfully in focus, every sound clear, his skin prickling with the graze of dried dead leaves from the undergrowth as he moved through it.

It took him almost ten minutes to reach the camera location.

He could have cut that in half but he came at it around and the long way. He wanted to be ahead of whatever it might have been that disabled it. If anything actually had. While he walked he knew that messing with cameras wasn’t really a thing many Skin walkers would bother with. They tended to just not be seen at all rather than foil any technology that would never even glimpse them anyway. But he knew when to be cautious and when not to be.

There were six cameras out here and this one was the closest to the access road that lead up to the property and it ran a lead to another camera that hadn’t been affected at all. There was something strange here, he just wasn’t sure exactly what. Closing in on the location in an ever tightening circle, Dean found nothing. Some animal tracks but nothing that would suggest a Walker. By the time he was standing underneath the tree that the camera had been placed in, he had more or less determined that it must be the equipment itself that had gone awry this time.

Dean spotted it under the small veil of camouflage Yueller had planted it under. Turning it in his hands, he flicked on the small pen flashlight he had brought in his back pocket. He blinked down at it. There was nothing wrong with the camera.

It had been simply manually shut off.

By the time Dean heard the sound coming up from behind him it was already too late.

A gloved hand went over his mouth and yanked him backwards off his feet. In a brief struggle for his firearm, the shotgun discharged in a deafening flash as it hit the forest floor. Growling, he sent a sharp elbow backwards into yielding flesh and turned himself into dead weight by letting his knees go.

As soon as he hit the leaf littered ground he rolled to the side and away pulling out the wicked length of knife at his side. A strong kick sent a flare of agony up his wrist, his hand turning numb and losing the grip he had on its handle. He was rushed again, grabbed by the shoulder and his already out swinging arm. Trying to wrench himself free into the opposite direction, he was lifted clear off his feet and swung around. Dean gasped when his back and head struck up hard against the damp bark of a tree. The gloved hand returned to smother him as he thrashed in their grasp.

He couldn’t catch his breath. Those god damn drugs they kept him down on made him at best almost half his usual speed. This fight wasn’t even over yet but he already knew he was going to lose. The knife was gone, the shotgun lay down somewhere in the damp leaves and the leather packet filled with Walker-Be-Gone wasn’t going to do much to whatever it was that was kicking his ass. Cursing, he pulled at the hand that was clamped down hard over his mouth. The shadow of his attacker finally stilled. Turning its head back and forth, listening for anyone else who might have been near by.

Dean surged forward again but couldn’t break free of the grip, his boots scrambling for purchase on the slick tree roots. He’d been out 30 minutes by now easy. Yueller would have heard the racket of gunfire half a mile away if it didn’t get picked up by one of the other cameras already. Yueller would help him, hone right in on his location and get some use out of that pistol he liked waving around so much—

“Dean.”

Dean stared up in the dark, his head ringing and his chest heaving for air.

“It’s me.”

The hand fell away, leaving Dean’s mouth gasping, the fog of frantic breath mixing together between their bodies.

Dean blinked again, swallowing back the dry night air and still not quite believing his own eyes.

“B-Bobby?”


	9. Chapter 9

Dean steadied himself against the bark of the tree.

The forest swayed slowly above them with the wind that started whipping the clouds across the broad face of the moon. The cold was starting to make itself known now, the chemicals they fed him doing only so much when he finally slowed down, his own heat draining away now that the fight was over.

Bobby looked at him evenly. "You look alright, Dean."

Dean didn't need to ask how though the question burned on his tongue. Most people, even his father, were quick to learn what questions concerned men like Bobby Singer.

Dean stared back in a daze. "W-What's going on?"

Bobby gestured over his shoulder.

"Sam's waiting, he couldn't even get close to the place. Said something's surrounding it. Head started hurtin’ so bad I had to pull over so he could puke."

Dean stepped backwards. "You don't bring him anywhere near here Bobby."

"He won’t leave till he sees you."

"Where?"

"Just a quarter mile down the road." He told him.

Dean steeled himself, still in disbelief at the sight of the man who stood before him.

"That isn't going to happen--"

"I know the guy that gives Jack Yueller his drugs Dean." Bobby said bluntly. "Used 'im myself but I wasn't never trying to start no god damn cult!"

"You get out of here." Dean hissed, looking back uncertainly into the dark behind them.

He was way over his thirty minute mark. He had about five minutes before Yueller's track light found the back of his head. He didn't want to find out what it would find after that. Bobby was speaking to him calmly, reassuringly.

"Jack won't take one step outside his door if he thinks a Skin Walker is out here waiting for him." Bobby shrugged. "Planted a track or two, he'll see those and get right back under the covers."

Dean tried to stay the white hot edges of his panic.

“You don’t understand—“

“I know some things. Know what Jack Yueller and Dave Keens did a few years back." Bobby shook his head. "He won't be looking for you for a while. I bought you some time. So come on along with me now."

It was difficult to make his muscles relax, resist the conditioned response to a direct infringement. His heart was racing. Sam was here. Sam should not be here. But if he could see him, he could tell him. It would not be neat or quiet but it had to be done.

Dean felt the hand on him tentatively fall away, but the grip Bobby had on his arm was still holding strong.

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Dean! Thank god, man!"

Sam smiled against the hood of Bobby's jeep, raising his arm as they approached. He looked tired but fine, his face unnaturally pale in the weak evening light. Though Dean had hardened his resolve and gathered his anxiety into a cool unconditional rationale, he still felt his muscles tense when he came to a stop on the asphalt. It was more than hard to stow the relief he felt with the simple sight of his brother but he forced it down. He shoved it brutally away before any false hope let him listen to anything Sam had to say.

Sam saw the look on Dean's face and his smile immediately vanished.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Dean let his anger pierce the hazy cloud that the chemicals had settled around his mind. “I told you not to follow me.“

Sam frowned.

“I got your phone Dean, I read what you left in there.”

Dean stilled.

“I put that stuff in there because I wouldn’t be able to tell you face to face what happened out on that ranch. What happened to Edwards, and more importantly what happened to you!”

His brother exchanged an uneasy look with Bobby.

“They’ve been giving you psychotropics." Sam told him carefully. "Bobby told me everything about their supplier. A doctor out in Des Moines gave us their last drop. Religious sects and cults use them Dean, they use them to manipulate their members, keep them under control--"

"Look, I know!" Dean exploded.

"What?"

"The drugs. I know what they do. Lemme tell ya, with what's been going on, it's better on them than not."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Things have changed. I just need you to put as many miles between us as you can until this all blows over."

"What blows over? Dean, I'm not leaving--"

"I know what I’m doing.” Dean growled.

Despite his assurances, he felt a fine sheer thread of panic form white and hot up the back of his spine. If Yueller and Keens knew his brother was here they wouldn’t hesitate to shoot him this time no matter what Dean said or did. And that god from the desert, if that thing was anywhere near them it could be drawn to Sam again. Leech into his head like some kind of parasite, burrowing inside and eating everything it found until there was nothing left.

Bobby was watching them both carefully.

“We are leaving.” Sam growled back, his gaze flickering on the military camouflage of Dean’s trousers, the buffed combat boots and the pressed army green shirt. “Right now.”

“No.” Dean said simply, taking a step back.

Sam's hand shot out, grabbing Dean's bicep.

“Dean,” The grip on his arm became so hard it hurt. “Don’t make me—“

“Let go.” Dean warned.

Sam’s demeanor faltered at the implied violence behind the words. His hands worked on Dean’s shoulders, desperate to do something but unsure of just exactly what.

"Dean, just c'mon..." He tried tugging gently but Dean braced himself firm.

“Look, if I’m not back soon, they’re going to come looking for me, and things will be a whole lot worse if they think I directly disobeyed an order.”

“Jesus Dean, listen to yourself!”

Dean shoved his hand away and backed up. “This is how it has to be for now Sammy.”

Sam suddenly paused.

“Wh-What is that?" Sam was looking down at bare skin, turning Dean’s wrists over to get a better look.

Dean silently cursed not having that jacket on now. Even in the dark with only the dim light of their flashlights Sam could see the marks. The old wounds scabbed over and dark. It was where the contacts had dried up enough to burn. They didn’t hurt very much, not anything like what they delivered, but they looked pretty bad. Especially to someone else who might know what made those kinds of marks.

“W-What..” Sam looked back at him in confusion. “What are they doing to you?”

Dean shrugged him off again.

“It’s nothing. It’s how they play their game and I gotta play it too or I’m screwed Sam.” Dean looked him hard in the eye. “Do you get that? I have to play or I’m never getting outta this.”

Sam was speechless, wide-eyed. If Bobby had anything to say he was keeping it to himself. Dean took a deep breath before continuing.

“You need to get out of here and wait for the dust to settle you got it?"

His brother was shaking his head in disbelief.

"It was easier with Dad. With him calling all the shots." Dean murmured and tried to smile. “In a way, it’s not so different Sammy.”

He'd been unprepared for this. Weary and disoriented, he could only stare his brother down while Sam shook with rage. He thought he'd been prepared for that. Sam raged fairly predictably and never well. Given a choice, his brother would temper anger with silence, go for days without speaking until the red lifted. But only two people in the world ever got his blood pumping and Dean knew, even as his bruised back hit the frame of Bobby's car, that he should have seen this coming.

Dean crashed into the metal with a muffled shout. Sam grabbed him again by the shoulder and swung him hard into the hood of Bobby's car. Dean snarled, catching Sam by the shirt with his fists and driving him back.

"Stop it! Both of you just stop it!" Bobby shouted as he tried to get between them.

Sam's face was red, his hands trembling in fists.

"Sam, stop." Dean panted.

His brother answered him by slamming him into the car again.

“Wh-What I left on my phone.” Dean said sternly as possible. “I don’t know much more than that... except-except one thing.”

Sam was listening unwillingly, hands wadded up tightly in the fabric of Dean's shirt.

“That stone, I think it’s a double edged. It’s keeping the thing from coming right down on their heads, but—but... I think it’s what Noqoìlpi uses to track them, like some kinda fuckin' mystic GPS."

“W-Why do you think that?”

“I-I felt it, and I thought, well, I thought I could see the guy. It was if he looked up in my direction or something.” Dean shook his head. “I can’t explain it."

"Wait a second." Bobby cut in, his face grim. "Dean you sayin’ you touched that damn thing?"

"I guess I am."

“If that demon had yer scent before, now it knows yer face.” Bobby promptly looked all around them, as if the specter of the desert god would appear at any moment from the dark forest itself. “You got to stick close to that talisman Dean, there’s nothing out here I can do for ya.”

“It uses the stone to find us. So take that.” Dean told them. ”Use it.”

“How?” Sam dragged his hands through his hair in frustration. “This thing is old. Older than anything we’ve ever dealt with before. Dad always said you don’t fight with things like that, you just get the hell out of its way!”

He fought back what he wanted to say.

Dean wanted to drive out of here with Sam so badly that he could barely think straight. Drive all night and burn the clothes on his back in a fire someplace real far away. However, none of could happen without Dean bringing the god’s wrath down on their heads. He had to stay under the stone’s protection or he was more than a dead man. His soul was forfeit too. If that was what it meant for Dean, he couldn’t begin to speculate what that meant for his brother if the god wormed itself back into his head again. Like forcing too much into little a space, burning him out from the inside for its temporary use.

No, that couldn’t happen.

Bobby's talent was knowing. From the look on his face, he knew what Dean was thinking almost to the letter.

"Sam, I'd like to talk with Dean for a sec."

"Forget it, Bobby."

"Just...wait a minute."

Bobby stepped past him to place his palm on the back of Dean's neck.

"I know you're careful. But you gotta be on your game more if yer gonna come outta this. Try to cut back on the drugs. Take 'em too long and the ride off that bus'll end you faster than the Captain will."

"Thanks, Bobby." Dean mumbled.

He stepped back to meet Sam's hardened gaze.

“You want to help me?" He asked his brother softly. “You get far away from here and you figure something out.”

“Dean, please—“

“Yer on your own Sam.”

When he turned and plunged back into the thick of the trees, his rough passage through the branches was all he heard. When he stopped after a few moments to look and listen, the forest lay quiet just like no one had ever been there at all.

“And so am I.” Dean whispered to himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yueller was waiting for him when he got back.

It was too warm in the small low room the fireplace was set in. The flames were too big, the fire fed too hot. The flames licked out from the hearth and flickered up hungry on the soot stained brick that rose to the ceiling.

"Have a seat, Dean."

Of all various and colorful methods there are to break a man, Dean decided that perpetual uncertainty was the most effective. Hope is universally cruel when dangled and he should have known better than to expect any when he crossed the threshold to their audience. He would have preferred a swift fist to the mouth to this.

Yueller, expert at creating false calm, had no readable expression on his face.

Keens waited too but not in the way the Captain liked to do it. Yueller was always arms crossed and feet apart at an at ease position. The set to his features letting you know just how many minutes and seconds there were that you violated. Keens well, that man was always comfortably seated when Dean arrived. Looking through a book or examining a painting on the wall. He always made it a point that his time was always better spent and never wasted.

“Report." Yueller said.

Did they know that the tracks Bobby had planted were fakes? Did they know he’d left the perimeter and made contact with his brother? Dean's gaze flickered back and forth between them, trying to gauge what exactly their mood was. He could not discern what they did or did not know. All they would know for certain was that he had been sent on a routine operation and was away far longer than required. He could not know the outcome. So he lied.

“The camera.” Dean began. “I think it was just a bad connection—“

“It’s working.” Yueller didn’t look behind him towards the bank of laptops, all of which showed pieces of the dark forest and nothing much else. "Tell us more."

Dean blinked, heart racing.

“Uh, I—I saw some tracks but they didn’t add up, so I tried to trace them but they didn’t go anywhere.” His mind sped with what he had conjured as he had swiftly moved back through the woods. “I thought I saw something, took a shot at it…but-but it was nothing.”

The shot gun was taken off his shoulder and inspected.

“Then I found the camera and the wiring was loose, just needed someone to--”

“What happened to your shirt?” Keens asked.

Dean felt his jaw tighten. God damn it Sammy. His T-shirt wasn’t ripped but it was pulled out of shape, all around the neck and shoulder from being grabbed. Dean’s hands came up to touch and smooth the fabric. He tried to appear causal and even a little bit surprised.

“Musta gotten caught.” He said with his eyes locked down around his boots. “On-on something.”

“On a tree branch maybe?” Yueller asked.

“Yes, sir.”

“You know Dean, for a professional liar, your reputation far exceeds your actual ability.”

“Sir, I—“

“Did you hear that Keens?” Yueller called back over his shoulder. “Dean here ran into a tree branch.”

“I did hear that.” Keens answered. “I just couldn’t quite believe my own two ears.”

“Who did you talk to Dean?” Yueller stepped forward, knocking his knuckles under Dean’s chin so he was forced to look up at him in the eye. “Who put on this little show just to see you?”

Dean felt himself shaking his head, his mouth working but unable to come up with something that Yueller would believe. But Yueller had to believe him. If he didn’t believe him than Dean was in trouble. And trouble meant that chair and that lecture and that machine.

“Was it your brother?”

Dean swallowed, the feel of Yueller’s hand under his chin making him stand very still.

“How did he find us you think?”

Dean shifted his weight and tried to keep looking back into Yueller’s gray eyes.

“How did Sam Winchester find us when that god damn desert ghost can’t?” Yueller’s nervousness was back. The name of his brother like a curse word on his lips.

“He didn’t.” Dean heard himself say truthfully.

“I don’t believe you.” Yueller said.

Dean felt the blade being tugged and slid out from his belt.

"You have three seconds to explain.”

He shut his eyes.

“Convince me.”

Dean felt the cool sting of the blade press the delicate skin of his throat. Seemed like he had gone and underestimated them this time. Yueller and Keens knew everything but the details. They knew the tracks were faked and the camera was tampered with. It didn’t take much to figure out it was all to get Dean off alone. They knew Sam was somewhere around the place but they just didn’t get why exactly. Why would he come all the way here if it wasn’t to take Dean away from them?

"Th-they came.” Dean stammered. “I saw them."

“Who is ‘they’?” Keens asked with interest.

Dean gritted his teeth and forced himself to speak.

“My-my brother and Bobby Singer.”

Yueller tilted the blade. "Why would you want to do something like that?"

"I-I didn't feel I had any choice, sir."

“Bob Singer?” Yueller was incredulous.” Bob Singer came all the way out here just to find you?”

“That would explain those tracks.” Keens shrugged and lit a cigar.

“What did they want?” Yueller asked.

“Me.”

Dean watched the glowing end of Keens’ smoke and unconsciously felt his inner arm for the round circles of scar tissue that were almost a year old. So long ago when they had wanted to prove to his brother that they did indeed have him. They had set a cigar to his skin over and over and over…

“And you said no?” Yueller was studying him closely.

Dean's throat was working.

"Answer me!"

“I said no, sir.”

Dean only relaxed a little when it seemed Yueller had.

“Well, I for one think it’s a nice thing that your brother went through all this trouble.” Keens was smiling. “In fact, I think it was rather rash of us to cut him loose when we did.”

Dean felt a sinking wrenching twist in his gut.

“I think if he keeps following us along, you know, just a few steps behind that is, it could help us out a great deal in the end to have an able bodied hypersensitive at our disposal.”

“Why?” Dean ventured. “What do you mean?”

He knew this man thought whatever connection Sam had had with the desert god had been interesting. He knew that they were now in the middle of some idiotic plan to try to kill the thing instead of just giving back what they had stolen.

“I’ve been doing a lot of reading Dean. And do you know what I found out? That what lives trapped in mortal flesh, can die in mortal flesh.” Keens shrugged offhandedly. “There’s a little bit more to it than that, a bit of hocus pocus in between but you get the idea.”

A vague picture of Keens’ plan formed in his head. Allowing the possession to take place, baiting it even with a living host. There were ways to lock a spirit no matter how large or small into one object, room or even a body. It was stupid and it was dangerous even for the big leagues. But this was no average spirit they were hoping to snare, this was a lot bigger and a lot stronger than that. This was a demigod.

“Y-You can’t. It won’t work.” Dean stammered. “Sam won’t get caught, not now—“

“We don’t have to do a thing Dean.” Keens grinned. “Where you go, he'll go. Straight to the Center of the Earth.”

Window Rock. Dean thought of the towering outcrop of sandstone that stood like a sculpted monument out there in the middle of no where. While he stood stunned, Keens stepped forward, the set of his features all business all of sudden. His hands went up on Dean's shoulders, then pulled the green shirt free, checking Dean thoroughly for anything concealed. Dean felt himself slowly raise his arms to get out of the way of the man’s probing hands.

He knew the drill.

Dean had been bad. He had directly disobeyed their orders and made contact with the outside. Dean would have to be searched for any contraband. He bit down hard and stared at a spot on the opposite wall when his belt started to be undone.

“No.” Yueller’s voice stopped the search.

Dean looked up at him in confusion.

“Our boy here told us the truth. He even went and turned down his own blood. This almost calls for celebration.”

Dean realized he was shaking a little bit and tried to stop.

“That Dean…” Yueller leaned down to speak softly into his ear. “That show of loyalty is all I have ever really asked of you.”

He thought he was going to be sick when he heard those words come out of the man’s mouth.

Dean was about to mumble some reply when his vision suddenly went stark white.

The vicious strike across his face made the room lurch sideways, the chair crashing to the ground as he stumbled backwards over it. His hands twitched to rise to counter strike with the blade he’d had at his waist or the taken shotgun from his shoulder, but his body resisted reaching for the missing weapons. His hands instead went to his face to check for damage. Dean hissed on the curse about to escape him, his instinct betrayed, the word frozen on his tongue.

He breathed hard and fast on the floor.

"That was for lying." Yueller rotated his clenched fist.

Dean picked himself up, the smear of blood across his knuckle bright red from where he’d wiped it across his mouth.

“Start packing up.” Yueller ordered. “They know where we are, we have to move again.”

“Wait a sec there Jack,” Keens interjected. “Let’s wait a day. Let them think what they did passed by unnoticed. That way they can follow along when we do get started and they won’t rush themselves up and do something stupid.”

Dean watched Keens tap the thick ash of his cigar into an ashtray.

“We’ll just be like one little convoy.”

Yueller listened and then nodded.

“Turn in Dean.”

It was time to sleep. To lay awake on his sleeping bag and stare at the cracked ceiling above him and do nothing but grind his thoughts over and over in his head.

“Yes, sir.”

“And Dean?”

“Sir?”

“I have to admit, I’ve had my doubts…” Yueller was holding out another bottle of water. “But I think you’re going to work out with us just fine.”

Dean numbly took the plastic into his hand, watching the cloudy mixture in it swirl and settle on the bottom. He turned back towards the stairs so Yueller couldn’t see his face when he responded.

“Thank you, sir.”


	10. Chapter 10

Dean stared at the water bottle.

Hard.

For almost 48 hours he’d tried his best to do what Bobby had told him out on that road. It hadn’t been exactly easy. This morning for some reason was spectacularly worse than the first one. The phrase 'pretty fucking horrible' came to mind.

His muscles were cramping like he had just spent an hour straight running as hard as he could then stopped cold. His T-shirt clung to him like he’d been doused with water. He ran a shaking hand over his face, disturbed at how hot his face burned when all he felt was a frosty chill so deep and bad his bones hurt. Bobby had said to cut back, not to stop drinking what they gave him all together. He started to see the finer wisdom in that bit of advice. By the time he decided to either give up and drink the stuff or just get rid of it so they didn’t see it sitting there full the next morning, Dean found he couldn’t even sit up.

Flashes of dizziness hit him so bad, he had to brace his hands on the floor to keep himself still. His heart was fluctuating in his chest, his stomach twisting into knots and purging itself over and over again until he had nothing left.

The container of water sat by itself across the room on the windowsill.

“There was a reason we asked you to drink it every day at the same time Dean.”

Dean did all he could. He rolled painfully to his side, away from the door and Yueller who was watching him with something like vague sympathy in his eyes.

“I don’t know if a man like you has ever experienced anything like withdrawal.”

He curled in further on himself. He didn’t have withdrawal. That shit was for junkies and those homeless guys he saw screaming to themselves out on street corners. This was just some pain was all. An agony that made his heart feel like it was wearing out right under his own skin. Making him sweat when he was staying still. Creating some mindless urgency that was so dire and desperate he couldn't breathe but didn’t even know would be required to stop it.

“Come on.” Yueller’s hands were hooked under his arms, forcing him up onto his feet whether he was completely capable of staying up there or not. “It’s time to go.”

Dean used the doorframe to keep himself upright as he watched the man slowly take in the empty sparse layout of his quarters. The inspection lingered on the window and the bottle that sat untouched on it. With a smile, he picked it up and made sure Dean saw him slip it into his back pocket.

“For later.”

Dean let his arm be slung over one shoulder, willing the cramps that knotted his legs to ease and move enough to get him down the stairs without falling. Yueller took it surprisingly slow however, waiting for Dean to get to each creaking plank before moving on down to the next one. Looking sideways at the Captain, he wondered just exactly how much longer his service to the man would last.

It also made him wonder just exactly how it would end.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The coolness left by morning was many miles behind them.

The inside of the van was sweltering despite the constant too-loud whir of the electric fans. All the world’s sounds that had become painfully amplified since he'd awakened before dawn, were now on constant replay in his head. Dean looked at the bottle in the door holder. His lips felt dry and numb, the stifling confined space stretching him thin, changing him into a mad wanting echo of himself that thought too slow and heard too much. His hands would not stop shaking, fine tremors making him clench his teeth to try and still them. His body had become governed by an engineered agony that would all stop with just a few swallows of a slow spiked death.

He let his head thunk down heavily against the glass window so that he could feel the dull pain of it, remember again that it was his. He felt every dip and plunge of the rough road, tires plowing over sharp stones and uneven soil. He only vaguely remembered what direction they were headed. Unbuckling his seatbelt, he lurched forward, trembling hands reaching out to find the floor. The simple act of staying upright in the bolted seat wedged among the supplies was too much strain on his system. All he wanted was to be still and lay down. Cover his head with his arms and wait for all of this to pass. It always passed. It had to eventually, right?

The ache had become a part of him, protesting every moment, every shift until he eventually learned to stop trying to accommodate it and just ride through each surge of its worst as best he could. His clothing stuck against him like unwanted skin, soaked through with sweat. Something fluttered against his face.

Again and again.

Unwilling to move he did anyway, his hand running up against his face absently. He felt one square shape laid to rest on his sticky cheek. It was smooth and thin, the smell of it chemical and familiar. A few others had fallen down onto the floor before him. With fingertips that would barely obey his commands, he lifted one to see what was on its surface.

It was a photo. A photo of him. For some reason he remembered the room he had been kept in far more than what he had actually felt like. The cool polished clean floors. The pitted heavy metal meat locker door up behind him. If he had forgotten just what he had felt like over a year ago, the pictures brought it all back with a clarity he didn’t even know he was possible of possessing. His eye was swelled shut, a broad strip of silvery duct tape was fastened neatly over his mouth. Shackled hands were raised slightly in a startled gesture. Probably the instinctive reaction to the surprise of the flash. It didn’t make any of it any less sickening to look at.

Dean remembered what Edwards had said then, even if at the time he hadn’t even been aware of his keeper’s name.

_I like to archive the process Dean._

The lost horrible look in his own eyes made the illness in Dean’s throat rise back up again. A few more photographs fluttered down around him. They were all almost the same. Different angles. Varying qualities of the lights. All of them of a man defeated, subdued, his anger dulled under so much blood that all was left was wary raw fear.

_One day you’ll look at them and you’ll laugh. I promise._

He remembered old Edward's smile and the shake of his head as he snapped his pictures and checked each time that the image he wanted took. For no reason at all, he thought of where Edward’s ashes were scattered, out there in the silent forest on the fringe of that run down ranch. The man’s duty was long over, his debt to the desert God in double forfeit.

“Back then...” Keens laughed a little bit to himself, turned around in his seat and leaning his elbows down on his knees. “Back then, we couldn’t even let you go to the can by yourself.”

The thin square he had been holding fell away, slipping amongst the others gathered by his face. He shut his eyes and tried not to think about just what exactly film managed to capture. He knew there was a good reason he had always hated having his picture taken. The brutality of its nature. Unforgiving as any spoken truth you never wanted to hear.

“But look at you now.” Keens said.

Dean opened his eyes to look up at the man, a smile coming to his own face whether he wanted it there or not. He sure had come along nicely hadn’t he? They should put him on a poster. Or maybe one of those recruitment commercials. He could paint on one of those self effacing solemn looks of duty while he held up a confident thumbs up.

“I need you to drink a little bit of this water now Dean.” The rosy nostalgia for Dean’s indenture had faded to faint annoyance. “When we arrive tomorrow, you’re gonna have a lot of work to do.”

“My-my brother…” His throat was dry, his tongue swollen but he managed to sound something close to coherent anyway. “S-Sam… he’s not going to, you won’t—“

“I think he’ll surprise us both at just how close to the pit he’s willing to go.”

Dean thought about the long wind of road that they traveled. The roar and rumble of the semi-trucks, the bouncing creak of the loaded produce pallets coming up from the stretch of the southern border and everything else in between. Somewhere amongst the families fighting in the SUVs and the lone drivers fighting back sleep with the radio was the man Keens knew was following along as diligently as any armed escort.

Sam was trailing them carefully to Window Rock just as sure as the sun was setting scarlet and searing in the sliver of the rearview.

“I think we’re way past using the plastic tube Dean.” Keens chided as he held up the water bottle. “But I’ll do whatever you need me to do to help you out.”

With the sight of all the old pictures and all, Dean was feeling a little bit nostalgic himself. He rolled over onto his back with a groan and shifted his shoulders in the crowded space that made up the studded metal van floor. He knew as well as they did that this new mission they were about to embark him on wasn’t something he might necessarily walk back from. In a way, he thought maybe he should be kind of honored. They were in fact, trusting him with saving their lives. Their existences were lost in a wager, hanging in limbo in a cheat that they had never really gotten away with. These men were depending on whether or not their newest solider would be able to do whatever it was they wanted him to do way out there where some holy man had discerned was the Center of the Earth.

The water draining over his face ran off to either side of his cheeks. He weakly but satisfyingly had turned his head at the very last moment so the liquid wouldn’t go anywhere but all over the gritty floor.

Keens sighed.

The hand that had propped his head up let him drop down loudly against the hard thrum of the bottom of the van. Dean felt himself smile again. He wondered if that tube might not hurt just quite as bad as he remembered. But when the hissing length of it was pulled free of a bag, the smile faltered and vanished. Like Dad had always said, memory always did its best to make the heart grow fonder no matter how unbearable the shit of it actually ever was.

Watching the bottle be carefully squeezed into the tubing, Dean knew he wouldn’t have to wait long to see how wrong those bullshit sayings had the potential to be. He tried not to fight it too hard when the fist gripped his jaw and shoved him backwards so he was forced to look at the back double doors.

He didn’t have much of a wait at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When the door slid open the empty stretch of desert road looked just about like every other Dean had ever seen.

Dry hot wind. Brown razor barbed cacti. The rusted collapsed wire fence for some left over cattle country this might have once been. Not another car or bullet marked highway sign for any mile in any direction. His bag landed by his feet, a decent cloud of dust rising at its impact with the ground up red powder that packed up along the margin of bleached gray asphalt.

“You can stand around here or get walking.” Yueller used a hand to shield the glare off the horizon from his face. “Either way the bastard is to going to catch up with you sooner or later.”

Dean resisted the urge to ask if the Captain meant Noqoìlpi or Sam.

"Now I want you to understand something." Yueller continued. “Once that horizon swallows us there'll be nothing. Out there there ain't nothing but all the time in the world."

He swallowed involuntarily at the promise of the depth of isolation behind the words. The wind gusted feeling like each individual breath was a physical touch across his sweaty exposed skin. All his senses seemed tripled almost to the point of bursting into an odd overload. Whatever had been in the last bottle had a little something extra in it. Dean guessed cleansing properties. Summoning herbs. Detox for the holy. Like making yourself a cosmic welcome mat. But the plan still just didn’t seem to jibe with all the scenarios of logic that played out over and over in his brain.

“But-but why,” Dean stuttered around his voice that seemed too loud on the empty roadside. “Why w-would He bother to gut me first if you got His toy?”

Ironing out that quandary easily enough, Keens causally tossed the stone in question to him, like it was a baseball instead of the extension of the living energy of an enraged demigod. Dean held it without closing his fist around it this time. It was alive and humming on his skin. Eager to find the larger sum of what it was a part of. Maybe even aware somehow that it was close to the land it had emerged from.

"How will I find it?"

"Oh, He’ll find you. It's got a claim on your blood. Might even skin ya slow and alive like it did our man if you aren’t as careful as you should be." Keens assured him with a look down at the talisman. “When you get closer to Window Rock, it’ll be just like knocking right on His door.”

“I could give it right back.” Dean half smiled. He wasn’t completely unsure that that wasn’t exactly what he was planning on doing anyway. “I could blow this entire thing outta the water."

“You could.” Keens nodded, seating himself down on the edge of the open van door. “But the instant that stone leaves your hand? You can kiss your ass goodbye, you'll be like a worm on a hook. No protection. No collateral. Nada."

He remembered the feel of the God pulling him inside out well enough. It had been about as close to anything he’d experienced that could honestly be described as unbearable. But it wouldn’t last forever. Even being skinned alive. Death would come after some amount of time no matter how long the thing wanted to play with his life. He had never been particularly afraid of blinking away into whatever it was that came next. But he had to do this smart. Sammy was going to be out there too. Dean already had a pretty good idea of just who and what was getting the pale blue talisman. If anyone was walking out of this forsaken place it was going to be his brother.

“Doesn’t sound so bad.” Dean muttered, leaning down with a swing of unexpected dizziness when he picked up his satchel. “I’ve always liked giving more than getting anyway.”

“So then He gets your soul.” Yueller spoke up having been quiet throughout the exchange. “You know what can be done to a soul that knows no death Dean?”

Dean actually knew more than his share about it but he didn’t feel like dwelling on it right at the moment.

“When He finds your brother, when you are out there by the Window…” Yueller nodded out towards the slant of the sun slipping down as the planet slowly rotated towards the dark. “You’ll have a chance then. You can kill it.”

Keens straightened from his seat, brushing off a film of desert dust from his arms and thighs that settled on in a fine powder no matter how hard you tried to stay clean. Yueller was already back in the driver’s seat and rolling the engine over.

“It’s that way.” Keens pointed in the vague direction of a distant outcrop of rocks that had lost all their color to the black shadows they assumed for the coming night. “You’ll know when to stop.”

Hefting his bag, Dean turned to study the far off landmark and then looked up and down the narrow strip of road. Right out into the middle of no where was a pretty good direction. The farther from the pavement he got, the harder the time Sam would have finding him out there in the vast big nothing. Dean wasn’t sure why he was still letting him fool himself that Sam had been able to follow them on something as base as sight alone. He knew it had a hell of a lot more to do with it than that.

He looked down at the smooth rock that burned in his hand.

Dean could move fast. He could make it hard for Sam to rush into something that could kill him without much of a second thought.

“Dean?” Keens called out from behind him.

He turned to see the window rolled down, and the man leaning out on one elbow, his face thoughtful and with an expression that was almost gracious.

“Sir?”

“Good luck.”

Dean nodded back at him. “Think I got all I can carry.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After a while Dean lost sight of the rocks Keens had told him to head for.

When he turned around in the quickly chilling night, there wasn’t even the bob and flash of passing headlights to mark that there had been a road out there somewhere behind him at all. Zipping up his nylon jacket, he listened to his boots crunch rhythmically into the gravel under his feet as he steadily made his way to who knew where.

Keens might have seemed pretty sure he would know the magical ring of toad stools or whatever shit he assumed was out here to locate the mystic X marks the spot, but all Dean could see was another steady repeat of a hundred identical yards out ahead that weren’t going to run out soon. He also saw plenty of dry brush that would make a perfect fire now that the desert had almost finished its polar temperate flip down into the frigid side. He knew the light would broadcast his whereabouts for about as many miles as he could envision in every direction. Using a little of what he was taught and knowing it wouldn’t make a whole lot of difference he built up his firewood under the low over hang of a rock shelf anyway. There were marks he knew how to trace into the earth that would also help him. Walking the tight circle of his own perimeter, he leant down occasionally to push his fingertip in and around the designs that made earth and air into wards.

Dean wondered, as Keens had mentioned, that if being this close to Window Rock might make some things useless as defense. With a small sigh, he figured he’d find out soon enough.

The bag that had been packed for him had plenty of water. He’d felt the weight of that well enough as he’d made the aching hike. Besides some other gear, it also had a few dried herbs twined tightly together. They were ceremonial. As useful for summoning as the chemical equivalent that they had made sure he’d swallowed. They weren’t taking many chances. The knowledge that they had as little interest in dying as most tended to, made him look up warily in the black shadows made even darker by the hectic flash of the orange flames that crackled and hissed in front of him. The lit rock face behind him stuttered and flickered with ancient graffiti. Strange line figures of men and beasts. Outlines of a long dead hand in uneven ochre pigments. For no reason at all he thought of all those miles blanketed by the nightfall. Abandoned like an old house, all the lights extinguished and all the closets closed but maybe not empty.

Dean lay down on his side, using the bulky weight of the bag under his head, and drawing up his knees as he found the fire didn’t quite ward off the cold as much as he’d have liked. Without thinking much more about it, he rolled the dried grasses wrapped in string in his hands a few times before tossing them onto the flames. With another look at a tightly capped bottle of water, he unscrewed it, forgoing the disgust when he tasted what had been bypassed undetected down his throat with plastic hours before. Squeezing his eyes shut, he gulped it down, choking and not stopping until there wasn’t a drop left. So much for trying to follow Bobby's advice.

Tossing it aside angrily into the dark, he settled back down against his bag, panting slightly and suddenly having the urge to scream as loud as he could in all the deafening quiet.

Dean watched the fragrant smoke waft up as the bunched herbs crumbled bright red, their thin brittle branches igniting like wicks. Even as he observed, he felt the water work into his system, the strange rush of the psychotropic magic hidden in the plants and flowers was already making the fire seem distant in sound and feel. The smells of the burning dried plants were heady and strong. When he looked up, the stars seemed to have lowered far enough for him to stand up and touch. They were so close he was sure they would shimmer and waver as if he’d disturbed the surface of a lake on a clear midnight.

Taking a deep breath, he slipped a hand into the inside pocket of his jacket and lay his fingers over the smooth surface of the stone. With his other hand he checked for the totem that would ward away the menace of the Skin Walkers in case they decided to join the party. Satisfied both were in place, he then gripped a long curved blade that rested concealed but ready just inside his sleeve.

“Ready or not,” He whispered. “Here you come.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

The glare of piercing white made him bring his hand to his face.

Throngs of people with spangles on their clothes swarmed around him, the blur of movement whirling and gushing like a warm current in the sea. The noise was unbelievable. Lulling and running like some musical refrain that had no end in sight. Under and over it was the crush of a thousand voices, laughing, talking, despairing and celebrating. He could catch their shadows as they pushed past him, smell their cheap perfume and thick cigars, but he couldn’t see any of them.

He clutched his knife and thrust it outwards in front of his body. The talisman, roiling with a magnetic intensity felt cold and heavy inside his jacket. He was thinking in time to his pulse, breathing slowly and trying to dissect what his head was broadcasting all on its own and what actually might be right there in front of his face. The stale sweat of strangers, the sharp flashing of neon numbers and the endless clinking of coins. Sepia washed and faded, he watched men behind tables pick cards from the air.

Dean clutched at his head for moment, trying to ground himself on one thing. The weight of the blade. The sound of his steady exhale. The tight laces of his boots. A voice wove into his brain like warm fingers, cleaving his thoughts apart from themselves like they had been iced together. The sensation made him stagger backwards, shaking his head even though it was all so deep inside he couldn’t force it back if he wanted to.

_You've come._

Dean turned his head and saw nothing but the rush of faces, indistinct features lost in watered down glamour. He jumped at the sudden shrill ringing of a slot machine paying off, the crash and clatter of coins filling plastic cups. The packed carpet under his boots reeked just beyond a few decades of cigarette smoke. Under it was the fine dense acrid scent of the dry dirt of rock and sand. The stale air shifted with the smell of sun baked red stone. The rattle of the giant inverted Big Six Wheel hissed through the spin of its spokes like the rattle of a snake’s tail.

“Yeah.” Dean ventured. “I’m here all right.”

Doing a full circle he couldn’t see much of anything outside the steady onslaught of lights and nonsensical noise.

“W-Where are you?”

The response was nothing but a gentle unfurl of smoke, rising slowly up to the pattern of ancient nicotine stains on the ceiling filled with yellowed crystal of faux chandeliers. There was no one to meet his eyes. Unanswered and suddenly angry, Dean braced himself again where he stood in the middle of the floor.

"Where are you!" Dean exploded furiously, heart thumping in his chest. All sounds were deafening, confusing him. Colors blending and colliding, the motion of the shadow crowd making him dizzy and sick.

_Down here._

A musky stink filled the air. A sandy haggard form moving low to the ground loped across the filthy royal red carpet, dodging the rush of phantom shoes stomping down around it. Its ribs jutted out from its heaving sides. The body was too long, its claws elongated and black, a red tongue flashing between its teeth. It came to a stop at Dean's feet and waited, tail lashing impatiently. Dean hunched down on his knees, bothered by the heavy bodies veering aimlessly into him, catching him about the shoulders and head.

 _This place startles you._ The creature said without making any motion of speaking. _But it is yours._

"Heh." Dean noted the long legs of a passing insubstantial apparition of a cigarette girl with a raised eyebrow. "Not bad."

He kept his face hard and serious. So this was his own playground? Of all the meeting places of the between he could configure this was it? It would figure that of all places, this would end up in a casino.

"I’m not here to play any games.”

_You are already a fool that has played too many games._

“Hey, I’m just trying to make things right.” Dean tried to explain. “Those other men, they ordered me to end you.”

The bedraggled animal considered him with no expression Dean was capable of deciphering.

Dean held up the blue stone with a half grin.

"Fetch?"

 _Watch yourself._ It snapped. _You must be more pedantic when dealing with me._

Dean released the breath he'd been holding and realized his hands were trembling.

"Fine."

Gingerly, Dean lowered himself to a crouch and set the heavy piece of turquoise down on the carpet. A low terrible growl rose from deep in the animal's throat.

 _My talisman._ Black lips drew back to show rows of jagged yellow teeth. _A killer sent to destroy a God willfully brings back what should never have been taken?_

"You have what's yours." Dean said evenly. "And revenge too if that’s the way you see it."

 _I shall have them that provoked me. But you..._ It was panting, thick ropes of saliva running down its jowls. _...what will you give me?_

Dean was visibly unprepared for the question but answered truthfully.

"Penance."

If a coyote could sneer, it plainly had.

 _You stink of them._ The animal growled. _You serve them. Why should I exempt you?_

"Please." Dean could think of nothing else to say.

It could do what ever the hell it wanted as long as it was all done and gone with the sunrise before his brother showed up somehow in this place. Dean knew he was out of options but he could speed things along a little to make sure Sammy didn’t find anything but a burnt out fire and a duffel filled with water bottles.

 _My wrath incurs a price._ The beast licked its chops.

"Whatever you want." Dean told it quietly. “Just make it quick.”

Dean didn’t have to sit around to wait for very long. Faster than sight, it seized his exposed wrist in its jaws. Clamping down with enough strength to snap his bones into neat halves, he faltered further down onto his knees, clutching his hand and staring back into the smooth marble black eyes.

The pain was exquisite, trapped in the clenched rows of teeth, he felt the warmth of blood seep through the layers of his clothes. The sharp points shredding muscle and scraping bone. His heart was beating in surges as he tried not to struggle, not to pull away as the jaws gnawed deeper. His vision was wavering and he tried to focus on the faces rushing by, delirious visions of them floating and falling.

The tearing feel he had felt out there in the night of the ranch started once again. That agony of having some extra skin he didn’t know he owned, slowly peeled back away from his body, ripping loose and yanking away from his very bones. His mind flashed to that night so long ago when Edwards had hung him up on a meat hook with a shattered broken arm. There was a time when your body let go of what its nerves were frantically telling it. There was a limit when everything began to shut down to spare the brain any further damage of having to experience its inevitable destruction.

And Yueller had been right, this pain might end but Dean had no idea what this desert God did with the lives it had won. He guessed he’d soon find out. There was nothing left to do now but lay down and take what came around. He took a moment to revel in the fine detail of his casino fabrication when his cheek pressed hot and sticky with blood against the itchy carpet under his face.

“Wait! Please, wait!”

Dean rolled his head to turn in the direction of the only voice that sounded like it had come from a human mouth. It hadn’t been some meaningless blurred mumble of the ghosts his mind had populated this no where place with. It sounded solid and real instead of the constant stream of half heard gibberish that flowed around him like the tepid air.

“Wait!!”

It was him. It was his brother moving steadily towards him, pushing through the hindering translucent crowd. Dean pulled at his mauled arm in panic, he hadn’t been fast enough, it wasn’t over yet. Now the demigod was going to finish them both despite what Dean had offered up without a fight.

"Sam..." Dean moaned, eyes closed.

He never felt the crushing jaws release. Lashes fluttering open, he smelled the burn of wood smoke. The carpet was gone, replaced with the sharp stones of the desert floor, his heart thudded slowly with his weakened body. His brother was there, sitting a few feet away, his features set and hard, eye to eye with another man. Light from the fire danced across their faces.

“I’d like to place a bet.” Sam said evenly.

The dark skinned man with darker long smooth hair said nothing. Black paint banded across the eyes made it appear as if there weren’t any eyes at all. Dean stared at the blood that dripped slowly from the strange open maw that made the unnatural wideness of a mouth. With a nod, the man that wasn’t a man sat crossed legged and silent. But He was listening.

“I’d like to make a wager for my brother’s life.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A circle in the sand and three pale identical shells.

The pit of Dean's stomach had lapsed long ago, gone out into absolute vacancy. Things around began to move lethargically; the fire's glow at his left took a hazy step or two toward the solemn formation of the rocks, which lurched forward to meet it; the stars could not keep still, rushing in tiny explosions of light. He, too, was detached and moved as the world did. A pale flesh-color had soaked behind his closed eyes, changing slowly from gold to white. It didn't hurt where he'd been bitten. He felt neither the chill from the air or the fire's warmth.

The wind was blowing rapidly above him, arrogance threaded through it like a thin gold wire, sharp and impossible to miss.

Do not hope for anything with nothing in your hands even now.

Sam was silent. Sweat glistened on his forehead.

Was this the gap between dreams? Dean had no idea. The carpeted, smoky glitz of his id was gone, leaving him somewhere between his last memory and waking. He wanted to struggle against the absurd world around him, come back to himself. But he was too tired.

He turned his head, trying to shift his gaze towards the shells in the circle. Only they were not there anymore. With large dark hands the god struck the sand, creating a small vortex. With a whistle, the cold pale sun peeked from the blackened horizon as a dog obeying its master. The air continued to soar and laugh around them like a flock of birds.

Dean had one word for it all--psychedelic.

Your brother's life lies with one of my servants. The voice of the god churned through the air. Choose wrongly and the sand will take his mouth, leak from his eyes and clot his brain. Or the sun here may shift its gaze, and glare down only upon him. Or he will dissolve and become absorbed into the wind.

"How many chances do I have?" Sam asked.

One. The god replied.

The release of air from his brother's lungs sounded like a wave hissing on a shore.

"Alright." Sam said.

He extended both hands and laid one over the hovering vortex, raised the other in the direction of the sun's face. The deep flesh color pierced Dean's eyes like a spotlight then and he blinked hard with a faint gasp. Near the fire, two pale shells rotated the earth beneath his brother's palms, moving in a careful, deliberate shuffle around the third. The god's glittering eyes remained locked on the circle.

Somewhere else the sand shuddered and rippled like the belly of a great cat and the sun peeked in and out of its space, night and dawn shifting in a blink. It was chaos meant to addle and when it finally calmed, there would come the choice.

Dean's heart thundered in his chest. He could not speak. He could see the movement of the shells behind his closed eyes, phasing in and out of the vision beyond his control. The sun's movement was bizarre, the undulating sand like a nightmare. When it finally stopped, the land seemed to sigh. He watched his brother very closely and waited for whatever creative death awaited him.

Sam's hands were large but they were not slow. His fingers were too long and ideal for card games. A deck moved lightening-fast almost like liquid in his palms. Blink and you'd miss the slip of an Ace into a sleeve or miss the twitch of the little finger as it slid something out of place. Deceptions had worked on this God before.

Dean saw the faint twitch to his brothers lips as he stared at the three shells before him and knew.

Sam was every bit their father's son. A lying, cheating, dirty con.

Lying in the sand on the brink of death, Dean had to smile.

What is your choice? The god demanded.

Sam withdrew the talisman from his pocket.

"You lose."


	11. Chapter 11

A humming, so deep and powerful Dean felt it in his chest as it rose and thundered around them.

Shifting with difficulty onto his back, at first he could not tell its source, whether the strange steady vibrations came from the ground below him or fell down like rain from above. It was like standing directly under a bank of those immense 100 foot tall ground power towers, the keen whine and buzz of electricity palpable on the air itself. The atmosphere was swirling with chaos he could not see. The vacant black eyes of Noqoìlpi were fixed on his brother sitting pale across the fire.

Sam's smile had died when the conjured sun shrank back into its confine, the drawn elements of the game winking out one by one back to where the god had summoned them forth. The fire’s flames had stretched and tipped to a bright blue, sending ghastly shadows shuddering in every direction. Most gods are children in that they have a glutton for reward and do not abide failure.

They also did not need to play fair.

Dean did not know the language so he could not place the precise words but in his mind he knew the wind's fury and the potent glare of unnatural sunlight that cut the night sky like a knife seemed to say one thing:

You.

In a violent flash of movement that startled them both, the cloaked god shot up from its seat on the floor and vanished, the soft deer skin garment falling in a heap on the ground. Not a sound was made. For what seemed like a long time, Dean wondered if Sam could hear his own ragged breathing too.

The wager was over. Sam had won. He waited for a searing holy light to engulf his eyes and liquefy him anyway. He waited for the sand to scratch and scrape his raw skin like a thousand relentless teeth. Nothing happened. Dean swallowed, fighting back the grit on his tongue.

Exhausted, he closed his eyes and slowly--very slowly--let himself smile.

"You did it, Sammy?" He breathed.

Sam was very quiet. He wasn't moving at all.

"Sam?"

Dean turned his head towards the fire, blinking up at the stock still image of his brother. Sam's body had gone completely rigid, eyes fixed and staring. Dean rolled over weakly, pushing himself up onto his knees. Panic sent him stumbling closer, catching himself on the nearby rocks. His brother's throat was working, joints twitching spasmodically. His mouth was half open, small desperate noises coming from him as though he were trying to take in air.

"Aw, no." Dean whispered, genuinely terrified.

Someone else was calling the shots.

He tried shouting his brother's name again, seizing his shoulder frantically and smacking at his brother's face in the unnatural flicker of light. Sam’s skin was draining of all color, lips blanched and faintly bluish in the abnormal sheen of the faltering blaze. His hair was dark with sweat.

"No. No. No. You sonofabitch." The weak murmur in Dean's throat rose to a desperate growl as he watched his brother's limbs begin to shake convulsively. The possession was happening again. Though he hadn't witnessed it the first time, he knew.

The humming grew, expanded until it was a sounding boom thrumming through the dead air. It shook the ground around them, rattled the small rocks. An earthquake? A violent gasp and Sam's body went slack, slumping forward. Automatically Dean moved to bear his weight before he hit the ground.

"Woah, Sam, easy, I gotcha." Dean clung to his brother.

The limp body in his arms was panting but the terrible vibrations had stilled. With a guttural voice Sam's mouth moved. Startled, Dean shoved him back to look at him. Sam's eyes had changed. His brother’s face had contorted to pure hatred, eyes narrowing and focusing on Dean’s, the natural whites roiling and filling with the same pigment of bleached sky that held its precious stone.

"Nice to see you again too." Dean said.

Dean’s mind reeled with about half a dozen exorcisms that he thought he might know fairly well. Some of them almost by heart. His fists worked on Sam’s sleeves knowing that none of that was going to be good enough. He pulled the stone out from the lifeless open hand that lay in Sam’s lap. This was the stupid thing had been the cause of it all.

“It’s yours.” Dean whispered. “Just take it. Take it and go.”

It was the sudden sliding sound of metal and the ready ring of loaded rifles that really gave him pause.

“Step away from them now, boy.”

Breath caught in his throat, Dean swung around in the tangled push pull of the wind. The voice that came through the noise of nature and the beings that twisted and wound their ways through it. The voice was loud and clear. A strong authoritative tone Dean had learned to react to whether he really wanted to or not.

It figured these guys would show up now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“You didn't really think we'd hand all this right over to you did ya son?"

Dean blinked up at the camouflaged men that had done their best to form a semi-circle with their diminished ranks that made them only two...

Yueller and Keens both had their rifles trained on Sam, the entity burning so hot inside that it was throwing out random searing flares of azure light. The sporadic flashes igniting the fire, sending it roaring up into the night sky like someone was tossing hand fulls of raw gun powder onto it.

"Thought you guys were done here!" Dean heard himself say.

"We’ve waited and shined up a lot of nonsense to reach this point." Yueller explained with not just a little bit of pride. “Didn’t have to even fool Him this time either. All we had to do was wait long enough for everything to come together just right.”

“Couldn’t come with just guns though now.” Keens nodded, holding up a small leather pouch that hung around his neck. “Some things you can only get way way way out there, by men that don’t want to give it up unless you get a little more than persuasive.”

The thought of one more person dying at the point of one of their polished new rifles about doubled Dean over sick again.

Keens and the Captain were both carefully aiming their weapons. They knew better than to forget what it meant to have a loaded firearm even when the man opposite you had none. Right there before them was an immortal trapped in living flesh. Its protection lost by the immediacy of the Navajo window standing wide eyed on the horizon, staring blankly into the center of the planet. They could do it now. They could put a factory made bullet from some machine out west right through a demigod that had lived for centuries. It could be killed. It would be dead and their years of running and hiding from its wrath would be over.

But why wasn’t the thing making another one of its grand exits? Why wasn’t it just going poof like it had every other time it came close to being threatened?

Dean suddenly thought about all the symbols he’d carefully traced around the campsite. The plants he’d burned. The rites he’d whispered. His frantic attention was pulled back into the present with a stifled sound of pain as Sam fell down onto his knees, a strange wailing coming from his throat that wasn’t his. Jesus fucking Christ. Dean had done everything for them but pull the fucking trigger.

He didn’t even think about it.

His body just started moving all on its own accord despite what ever injuries it had sustained. Dean made contact with Keens first, surprising the man who was concentrating intently on the danger that was writhing just a few yards away on the other side of the fire. The explosive sound of the gun’s discharge up into the sky made him think it was too late to get to Yueller before he did what he came here to do.

Swinging around with the heavy end of the heavy rifle in his hands, Dean saw the trigger squeeze and release just as he brought the blunt end of the firearm up under the Captain’s jaw. The tall man’s entire body was jarred violently backwards into the sprawl of the scramble of prickly ground brush that Keens had collapsed into. Trying to catch his breath, Dean turned to see where the bullet had met its mark. He knew he’d see a small entry wound right on his brother’s chest that would prove this entire thing had really reached the conclusion he’d been trying so hard to circumvent. For a moment Dean was frozen in place, staring at his brother as he struggled up onto his knees. Sam’s return gaze was confused by the proximity of the fire.

Dean wasn’t sure how he got to Sam’s side, his limbs moving on pure adrenaline and not much else.

"Jesus Sammy,” Dean moved his hands through his brother’s clothing searching for hot wet blood and torn flesh. “Tell me you're okay.”

Sam didn’t answer him, his body oddly still in Dean’s grip. In the palm of Sam's shaking hand, Dean saw the spent bullet the Captain had tried to send into his heart. But it had never made its mark. Noqoìlpi had stopped it somehow. Caught it like some Superman comic book trick. The bullet was dropped down into the dust, Sam absently rubbing his chest where it should have left a crater like hole and not much else. Dean was forced to touch the unharmed spot, to make it real and convince himself that there weren’t any more illusions hiding behind anything else that he was seeing. He knew now wasn’t the greatest time to put much trust in face value. Dean finally turned his attention away from the hands that were shaking over his own towards whatever Sam had fixated on through the flames of the fire.

With a small sigh, Dean prepared himself. Yueller and Keens. What was there to do with them now? A shake of hands? A truce? Pistols to the head and some shallow graves? Maybe a nice long laugh at what this whole mess had turned out like. Clenching his fists, Dean forced himself to a stand knowing that any kind of conclusion he could think of was just as bizarrely possible.

But there was something there.

Hovering over the sputtering remnants of the fire Dean had built so long ago was something formless but enormous. It was hanging still over the ground outstretched on either side of its core like some fleshy grotesque semblance of wings. Dean’s thoughts were forced to the mangled forms of the Skin Walkers he’d seen, pushed and pulled from the shapes of animals and settled into some unsavory being that settled neither within humanity or the beasts that subsisted at its fringe.

He wasn’t quite sure how he knew, but the thing wasn’t facing them. It was concentrated on the men that had come to slaughter it. The men that had taken Its possession and had tried to perform the same act of cheap chicanery a second time just for their own survival. These men no longer held onto what they had stolen, they were no longer safe in its vicinity. But men like them always had a few tricks up their sleeves to make it out of just about anywhere alive.

Dean dug into his front jean pocket and caught everyone’s attention the only way he knew how. He put two fingers in his mouth and whistled loud and shrill.

He met Yueller’s eyes first when he held up the reacquired blue stone he’d taken from his semi-comatose brother’s fist. Yueller, bless his soul, appeared actually relieved. Every aspect of his composed expression revealed that he truly believed Dean was going to obey; at any moment he would toss the thing to him like the last life preserver on a sinking boat.

The look on the Captain’s face faded when he realized that wasn’t going to be the case at all.

Dean looked at Keens next. As usual, the man was a few steps ahead of his companion. Despite the heat that had started to waft back up with the coming sunlight, Keens face was stark white. The grip on his weapon was stiff and trembling. Dean’s grin turned a little apologetic at the look of stark horror on a face that exuded usually nothing but the most content calm that Dean had ever seen.

“Sorry fellas.”

Some kind of apology seemed fitting given whatever the hell it was that was about to happen next.

There was a sudden noxious wind when the massive heaving shape suddenly moved. Dean’s arm involuntarily flew up to shield his face from a sudden colossal sound. The air all around him was sucked away, and then pushed back, his ears singing in pain from the rapid rise and drop in pressure. It had been some kind of impact. An impact and a strange noise. Like catching the echo of a collision across miles of flat wide open space. Or the deep thunderous crack and shudder of something massive coming down unseen in a forest. When after a few moments went by and nothing flattened him too, he warily lowered his forearm.

"Do it now!"

Dean had never imagined the desperate sound ringing in Yueller's voice before. It was pleading and without control.

"Keens!"

He was not certain how Yueller and Keens had met. He did not know the strengths of the bond between them. But he knew somehow that the devil Keens had known from the start of this hunt that only one of them would be walking away from it.

Keens did not bow his head or look as though there were anything at all he ought to regret. He was looking Yueller dead in the eye when he spoke.

"Sorry Hoss." He said. "But this?" He held up the small leather pouch in his hand. "Good for one ride only."

That was when Yueller started laughing. A low rumble at first which grew to high pitched chortles, screams and guffaws. His great shoulders shook with mad gaiety as he turned to face the god.

Suddenly the roaring laughter warped into harsh coughing. Dean watched as Yueller fell to his knees, gagging when a rush of fine powder blew as though from a bellow out of his mouth. More followed in mass quantities, Yueller's face a sickening purple as he vomited clumps of damp sand from his lungs, strangling and choking. The veins in his neck were like plastic straws through his skin. Dean did not look away, his eyes passive and fixed on the writhing body in the sand. He felt Keens watching on from behind him and wondered why the man was sticking around for the show.

Suddenly sand shot from Yueller's lips like an explosion as he screamed, clutching his middle in agony. Surreal high pitched wheezes were all he could manage now. The front of his shirt was blossoming with dark stain. The internal organs bursting through the layer of skin. More sand flowed from the open wounds, red with Yueller's blood.

Yet Yueller somehow continued to howl like an inhuman thing, tongue protruding from his lips.

It was then that Dean felt the slow chill creep up the back of his neck. The sun's glare had refocused sharply, intent and deadly on the prey of the god. Like an ant through a magnifying glass. His skin was smoking, his hair on fire, the clothes flaking away from his body in smoldering sheets of ash. The skin of his face darkened and Dean was reminded faintly of blistering charcoal. Bit by bit surface flesh flecked off in the wind like old paint, carried away until all that remained was the tar like bubble of searing hot blood beneath. Even the eyes in their sockets had liquefied, dripping down into the sand like clear honey.

The screams had faded away. Replaced by the crackle and loud snap of roasting skin.

Keens was still there, walking slowly backwards away amongst the jutting rocks.

“S-Stop! Hey!!”

Dean stumbled forward, determined not to let the man slither away with whatever pilfered magic he’d managed this time. He reached him in several strides, a moment of triumph flaring and fading when he felt his hand pass right through the shimmer of Keen’s body.

“No... no...” Dean muttered to himself as Keens took another step back and faded just that much more.

Keens raised a hand in farewell, and cast one regretful look at the pale blue stone he had hoped would vanish right along with him.

“Hope I’ll be seeing you again soon Dean.”

And then just like that...

The wind rushed up, swirling the fine choking dust of the loose sand floor and the man named David Keens was suddenly mixed with the grit and debris of the desert. Coughing and covering his eyes, Dean was not surprised to find no sign left of Keens when the wind died down as quickly as it had stormed. The remains of his Captain finally collapsed like a burning building in the nocturnal sun behind them. Looking around in uncertainty, he felt his heart start to pound in his chest once again. The sky was just starting to stain a sick purple. A wavering line of pink promising the dawn coming up within the hour along with the bloated red sun.

But the rocky desert floor was empty.

Besides the shattered slide of the stone wall behind them and the blackened circle of the smothered fire, there was nothing else to be seen for any direction around. Dean got up unsteadily to his feet, giving his surroundings a good 360 before convincing himself that he didn’t have to start searching individual sage bushes for anything at all.

Sam groaned, using a crumbling mound of rock to steady himself, his own journey to a stand about as graceful as his brother’s had been.

Sighing down at the blue rock in his hand, Dean shrugged and tossed it into the bed of smoking ash within the ring of fire stones. If the old god couldn’t find His talisman there, then this really was no longer their problem.

Brushing his hands clean, he turned his attention over to the crushed duffel and the smashed water bottles whose contents darkened the sand under them. He scanned the miles around them with no aid or transport in sight. Being alive and all was fantastic but Dean was a little bit of a forward thinker when it came to the well being of his own skin. It might have all been over, but it wasn’t exactly over and done with. Speaking of skin, he winced when he finally got a good look at his wrist and hand. Unwilling to examine it any further just yet, he figured the rest of him was probably just as exciting. He felt the thread of his burning adrenaline finally wane and run out. Forcing himself from sagging down to the ground like he wanted to, he cleared his throat and steadied himself knowing he had to at least keep going until they were back on a highway traveling under someone else’s power.

“W-We gotta start walking.” Dean stated as he grimly gauged the swiftly rising sun. “Right now.”

“Don’t worry.” Sam breathed out as he leaned over for a moment against his rock. “We got a ride.”

Deciding to let that cryptic comment slide in favor of checking his brother over for anything he might have missed during his admittedly more distracted first sweep, he found nothing but scratches and bruises. Sam did hiss and draw back when Dean’s hands wandered near his face.

“Head ache?” Dean weakly guessed.

Sam forced a smile that Dean assumed was supposed to be reassuring and not a warning that Sam was about to throw up at any moment. Either way his brother meant it, it was a great thing to see.

He eased a hand under his jacket over a dull pain that had started to become sharp and distracting. It was starting like that all over his body, all the ignored forgotten wounds coming out of the haze and making themselves known with a vengeance. The ground shifted under him as his head rocked off its own equilibrium for a few moments.

"What about you?” Sam asked, his voice fuzzy and slow with his own pain.

"What about me?” Dean managed a pretty good smile that he mostly meant.

“I mean, are you—“

Dean suddenly looked up at the hectic echo of a far off beeping horn. Spotting a plume of dust rising from out of no where, the glint of a dented fender finally revealed itself on the front of an old blue pick up that was half way to being one of the junkers it dutifully towed for a living.

“Told ‘em if there was anything left,” Sam sighed as he rubbed his hands roughly over his bloodshot eyes. “It’d be at dawn.”

“Ah.” Dean nodded.

Looked like their kind of luck didn’t have much to do with luck at all.


	12. Chapter 12

Sam knew the trip back over the borders to South Dakota would be long and quiet.

He offered to drive every time he found himself awake again, the time seeming to have not magically slipped by for hours each occasion he made to rest his eyes. Bobby always said no with a shake of his head. Sam supposed it was something ingrained in their kind, like bad backs on nurses and trick knees on athletes. If they knew how to do anything, it was drive straight through whether they felt wide awake or not.

The cab of the truck didn’t feel all that crowded. Its bench seat was deeper and wider than the one he was used to, give or take a few stray coiled springs working their way up through the worn padding under the leather. For some reason he couldn’t wait to see the weed choked start at the wind of Bobby’s dirt road. He wanted to settle down within the dim cool inside of a carefully warded house and just quietly take stock of what had all happened.

He wanted to take a shower and change his clothes that he’d been traveling in for days. There were certain remedies he could mix up himself that would finally take away most of the nauseating stick and feel of another mind that had nestled tight into his own. Rubbing absently at his temples, he couldn’t shake the sensation of someone shooting through his memories and every thought like his brain had been a cheap yard sale. Everything Noqoìlpi had touched had been deemed as useless as second hand garbage that was of value to only the person who had had the audacity to put a price on it.

He didn’t want to keep drifting off up against the dusty window. It was so hard to fight his eyes that wanted to send his body into the oblivion it had been denied for much too long. Using his fingers, he started pinching himself hard on the soft skin of his inner arm. When that stopped working, he covertly dipped those same fingers in the scalding hot coffee handed to him after he’d paced the small parking lot of a rest stop.

Bobby as usual, didn’t miss a whole lot.

“It’s another six hours at least.” He murmured. “Why don’t you just go ahead and get some shut eye.”

Sam looked between them, his blurry gaze falling on his brother who hadn’t woken up once to ask if he should take a turn behind the wheel. They had checked him all over before they started moving. Bobby had said things like: ‘superficial wounds’; ‘pattern bruising’ and ‘needs a few good meals’. It had all been a hectic blur then. But now that Sam could take a good long look at his brother, he could really see the kind of damage that had been done.

Dean was noticeably thinner, his skin paler from lack of sunlight and what was plainly malnourishment. His hands twitched, even in the deep sleep he’d fallen into as soon as the engine turned. It wasn’t the kind of twitch a person did naturally when they were caught up in some REM cycle of dreaming, it was something physical, some kind of nervous reaction. The dark round marks that started at his wrists and disappeared up under his jacket sleeves made Sam’s jaw clench.

The first thing he was going to do when they got to a safe place was take all these clothes from his brother. The green shiny jacket and the camouflage trousers. The scuffed dirty boots and whatever else those men had forced Dean to wear. He was going to pour gasoline on it all in a pile and set it on fire until there was nothing left. Sam swallowed as he watched Dean continue to sleep undisturbed even after Bobby swerved in a jagged line to avoid a meandering semi that couldn’t choose which lane to stay in. He couldn’t torch everything that had been left on his brother.

He wasn’t even sure what exactly he’d find when Dean finally opened his eyes and was for the first time in months, right back at home.

 

 

 

 

 

The first few days were as silent and still as the ride back to Bobby’s place had been.

Sam had been anxious at first despite the older man’s explanation of just how much of the good stuff Yueller and Keens had made sure went into Dean’s system for their last hurrah. The mildest form of recreational psychotropic stayed in the blood stream for up to 12 or 15 hours after use. They had both guessed that Dean hadn’t been dosed just once and however many times it had occurred, it hadn't been small reasonable amounts.

"Just be glad he’s not seeing things on the walls and talking nonsense.” Bobby told him with a pat on Sam’s shoulder. “That stuff can make you crazy.”

He watched Dean’s sleep turn less restful as time wore on. He knew while his brother might not be awake, there was still some trip the drugs had sent him on still running in his own head. It was nothing blissfully serene either considering the strange sounds he’d make that would jar Sam awake from his sprawl in the seat by the window. Other drugs helped at times like that, just like they helped the hapless fools out there in the real world that took copious amounts of the stuff on purpose and got just as lost.

Sam settled himself back in the large old chair he’d moved into his brother’s room on the first night. It was falling apart but was about as comfortable as any bed and suited his frame when most furniture didn’t. When he couldn’t take the silence anymore he’d wander down the stairs, obsessively reading and rereading everything Bobby had on the desert god. Convincing himself over and over that everything that needed to be done had been done. The thing wouldn’t come looking for them now. Sam might have cheated, but he’d won the wager fair and square according to the celestial rule books.

When he finally left Dean alone on the third night to find a bed of his own, he lay down with a heavy sigh. Despite everything that had happened and the shit those men had dragged him and his brother through, he couldn’t help but wonder just exactly where they were now.

Wagers lost to Gods didn’t usually come out very well. Unfortunately, Sam’s imagination was just vivid enough that even though he yearned for some decent rest, he didn’t find any until dawn started to glow softly on the window panes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was a relief to stumble down the hall in the middle of the hot afternoon and see Dean’s empty unmade bed.

Noting the open bathroom door as he moved quickly down the stairs, he could hear the steady low voice of their host back there in the kitchen. Sam slowed his pace a little knowing the sound of him on the steps had already announced his presence but a little wary of interrupting whatever conversation that might be taking place. He also realized he didn’t know what to say when it came time for him to open his mouth. His brother had never taken to blatant concern very well.

In fact, when he turned that corner he bet Dean would be on his third bowl of cereal and asking for a fourth time just exactly where his car was. He’d need a shave real bad and he’d be wearing some dirty black concert T-shirt that he’d maybe left here once when they’d stopped by. He’d see the look on Sam’s face and make some stupid joke to put the brakes on whatever crap his little brother looked like he was about to start reciting.

Feeling the start of a tired smile come to his face, Sam took a deep breath and walked right in.

“Come on Dean, just a little bit.” Bobby urged softly.

Sam paused in the doorway, unprepared for what he saw seated at the uneven wood table. Bobby’s gaze flickered up at him and then back to the plate of toast and some eggs that was sitting untouched in front of Dean.

“I’m not hungry.” Dean mumbled.

Not hungry? Sam swallowed back what he wanted to say knowing it wasn’t anything anyone in this room didn’t know already. Dean had been in bed for almost three days straight and had done nothing but sip water and make trips to the bathroom. Before that, God only knew how often or what those men had been forcing him to subsist on besides massive doses of medication. There was no black T-shirt but one of Bobby’s flannels, hanging on Dean like it was a few sizes too big, the daylight showing the true pallor of his face, and the strange new delicate cant of the overt definition of his collar bones. Sam could see it all more clearly now. The leanness in his features. His arms. Even his hands.

“Just try to eat some of it.” Sam listened to himself say.

He remembered the days he’d been left without food and then tried to reason that experience in terms of weeks and months. He slowly sat down opposite of Dean and nudged the plate closer to his twitching hands.

Dean reluctantly lifted a piece of dry toast and put it in his mouth. The room was weirdly quiet and attentive to his every move, waiting anxiously to see if it would be one bite or hopefully the entire thing.

His brother didn’t make it even half way through.

“It’s okay, it’s all right.” Bobby said when Dean looked up at him apologetically, breathlessly trying to support himself on the table edge as he leaned over and threw up again onto the tile floor. “This place has seen worse, don’t you worry.”

Sam was grateful for the smile that came with Bobby’s remark. He pulled Dean up by his shaking arm, and felt a strange guilt for having asked him to eat when he had already said he didn’t want to. Dean was just trying to make all the nervous people around him at ease. He wanted this all to go away just as badly as they did.

Helping his brother back to bed, Sam wondered why he never realized it just wasn’t going to be that easy.

 

 

 

 

 

Sam didn’t like it but he sure as hell hadn’t planned on it.

The nature of their lives, and he suspected those of people in the world in general, tended to have events arise and demand your attention when you had the least time for it. Of course it had been at first a job. One of Bobby’s jobs which wasn't exactly the brand of stuff Sam was particularly used to.

Bobby’s war was waged almost exclusively in the quiet buildings and dusty basements of the undisturbed academic. His passion and focus lay in his knowledge of what and where, who and why. It wasn’t to say the old man didn’t occasionally get some blood or worse on his hands, but on the spectrum of the men that walked in the dark, he was a kind that moved mostly with his weapon loaded but lowered at his side.

But he took calls for his aid extremely seriously, and when he got one at almost dawn on the following Monday, he had his pick up mostly packed before Sam could even figure out what was going on. The details weren’t very forthcoming, but that was another trait of their work that Sam had long since learned to stem his frustration from. He was glad Bobby had no problem with leaving his home to them both. It was less than an issue, one that Bobby didn't even feel the need to address.

The dust hadn’t even cleared from the end of the long winding driveway when Sam’s own cell startled him from his jacket pocket. He’d just tossed it on because of the chill and hadn’t even remembered the phone considering he’d gone for so many days without hearing it.

It had already hit the voice mail by the time he’d gotten to it.

Standing out there in the driveway he heard an old familiar voice speak in a low tense way. It was a message they had repeated over and over, the short sighs, and subdued quiet making it even harder to listen to the date, an address and a hope that Sam would be able to drive out there for the thing. They assured him that they’d understand if he couldn’t.

They really would.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“How’d he die?”

Funny that Dean’s first question was probably exactly what Sam’s should have been too. Weirdly enough he hadn’t thought about it until the moment it came out of Dean’s mouth. He supposed that was what shock did to you. It made your brain stumble and stop so it didn’t work in any linear sense.

“I don’t know.” Sam answered honestly. “He was in a few of my Federal Civil Procedure courses and um, a couple of my Government Litigation.”

“Must have been pretty young.”

Sam looked up at his brother, his elbows at his knees letting him work his hands as if he’d been trying to get them into real knots. The funeral was two states away back at the hometown his ex-classmate had left behind.

“Are-are you sure it’s—“

Sam swallowed at the awkward stuttering tone that Dean’s voice had lowered to. The thought that those men were still somehow out there looking for them hadn’t really been any part of Sam’s logic process since he saw them vanish like ghosts. The idea that Dean didn’t or hadn’t experienced that form of closure made Sam a little surprised. And suddenly, a little worried.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m sure, Dean.” Sam had called the appropriate parties back. He had said the right things. Well worn phrases he knew better than any physician or Priest when it came for times of loss and fear.

“So when are you going?”

Sam stared hard at the floor, trying to will his right knee from bouncing like it tended to do when he was lost inside his own nervous agitation. He had to do this right or this would end up in some stupid throw down fight he really didn’t feel like having.

“I decided not to go.”

That was easier to say than, there’s no way in hell I’m leaving you here all alone in this house by yourself after I found you like that out in the desert. It's only been two weeks since those fucking lunatics stopped torturing you with God only knows what and I don't even know what else because you won’t open your god damn mouth about it...

In fact, it had only been a week since he'd stopped wearing that damn puke green army surplus crap that they'd forced him to own. Dean hadn't said anything but Sam knew he was wondering where the last of it had gone.

Sam would show him if he wanted. All of it. Burnt up black in the bottom of a steel oil drum out back amongst the endless stacks of dissembled automobile exo-skeletons. Sam had burned the duffel bag too. The thick leather combat boots. The yellowed neatly printed rule books self published by a military man that had had a lot of rhetoric and how to implement it. The methods. How often. How hard. The penalties. The rewards. The punishments. The unyielding language that did not bend for any simple human error.

He had even read some of it. Trying not to see where certain pages had been dog tagged, trying not to imagine his brother reading the thing with a flashlight, night after night, in whatever shit hole they were keeping him in. Whatever back of some van they'd used to get around. He couldn’t read much of it. It had made him sick. Angry. The worst kind of helpless now that it was all said and done and he hadn’t been able to bring Dean out and away from those people any sooner than he had.

“Wouldn’t mind a few days on my own.” Dean suddenly said, sitting back in the chair behind Bobby’s desk and smoothing out the top of a pile of papers on it. “A few days of quiet sounds kinda nice.”

Sam felt his knee going again and tried to stop it. He took his gaze away from the dark trail of burns that followed up under each of his brother’s forearms. They were so evenly spaced and shaped, they almost looked decorative. Sam watched his brother carefully, waiting for the lies he was never good at keeping right under his surface. Waiting for some kind of quiet plead to actually not be left alone for one moment in this house. But when Sam searched Dean’s face, all he saw was some exhausted indifference. Sam knew he had to play this the right way no matter what he felt about it. He had to cut Dean some slack however he wanted.

“It—It’d only be for about two or three days.”

Dean shrugged, not even regarding him from up over the week old local rag he had started reading.

“Don’t ride her on that cheap shit.”

Sam felt a small piece of relief that the car, Dean’s means of vanishing if he could, was being handed over to him. His brother had never made a large show throughout all their lives about requiring time to himself. But there was always a first for everything.

Packing only took twenty minutes.

Sam planned to be headed back on the interstate before the last ‘Dust to Dust’ was uttered. He was going to get this over with as soon as possible. Not out of disrespect, but simple peace of mind. Sure. He’d give Dean some space if that’s what he wanted. But not a large chunk of it and not this soon.

Dean wasn’t around when Sam was ready to leave. He called out his name a few times by the front door and even resisted the urge to ring him although he must have been within 100 yards in any direction.

Sliding into the car, he thought it was a little fitting to leave it all just like this for now.

A glance into the rear view mirror back at the house made his hands grip a little harder on the wheel. The windows were all dark, the door shut and blank. Even with someone around the place never looked so abandoned and deserted to him before.

But maybe that’s all Dean wanted.

Not to be anywhere at all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Two to three days turned out to be four.

Sam wasn’t sure why it hadn’t occurred to him that pretty much everyone in his graduating class would be appearing from out of the woodwork. Sam, having made quite the vanishing act himself after a particularly gossip worthy incident was almost in as high demand for communication than the poor dead guy’s young wife and inconsolable mother.

He couldn’t get away from the constant invitation to drinks, dinner, a lunch, another drink, some quiet conversation in even quieter cars. It was a never ending stream of reassurances and gentle comfortable smiles from one person after another until they finally at least seemed semi-satisfied that they now owned his phone number, an e-mail address and a few pictures for physical proof that they’d seen him at all.

Checking into a motel that first night he’d called Dean right away, half hoping that Bobby’s voice would be in the background.

“How are things?” Sam had no idea how else to phrase that.

I was sleepin’.

Sam glanced at his watch. It wasn’t even 9PM yet.

“Oh, a-are you feeling okay?”

Just fine.

Sam paused, wanting to prolong the exchange somehow, wanting to reach through the phone and choke him a little until he volunteered all the stuff Sam really needed to know. Like had he slept all day? Real sleep. Not that weird laying around on his bed and watching the window thing that he thought he was getting away with. Had he remembered to eat a damn thing? Maybe even take a shower?

Night Sam.

“Dean, wait—“

What?

“I’ll call you in the morning.”

Can’t wait.

The line dropped neatly when his brother ended the call.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The fourth day almost turned into a fifth but Sam went against pretty much every single social nicety he’d ever been taught to function in the world with others and not be deemed cold or mentally unstable. He did it all with a certain political and self effacing flare that made him look more put upon about his early departure than maybe the grieving family itself.

All the other calls Sam made to his brother went to voice mail. It bothered him more than he thought it should. But it didn’t take much to know that Dean was in no mood to be checked in on. Sam had felt the same on more than one occasion. He left long droning calm voice messages, hoping that somewhere out at the end of that dark road, in some dim room Dean would listen to it at least once before hitting delete.

By the time he was back on the road and he knew he’d see Bobby’s house before the sun had time to get down and dark, he had a deep sigh of comfort that reached down to the bottom of just about everything he had. In a couple hours, he could make sure everything was like it should be. And if it wasn’t, at least Sam would be there to nudge it all back into place. He wasn't sure if he should have been relieved or disturbed to find the house in more or less the exact same condition he'd left it in. It was after all an old run down place, and if some things hadn’t changed in 20 odd years, they weren’t going to start changing now.

However, Sam still wished a bottom floor light was on. A soft murmur of a television flickering its dull glow on the white washed living room walls. The smell of cooking wafting through the back kitchen windows. Anything at all that indicated someone was walking around and existing inside.

Walking up the creaking steps, Sam didn’t see, hear or smell a thing. A glance around the back of the house showed him that Bobby hadn’t gotten back yet either.

“Hello!”

Sam called out, his voice striking the still air of the downstairs like he’d just violated some hallowed ground. It seemed a little too warm in here despite the chill that had made him play with the car heaters when the sun disappeared. Sam quickly noticed that all the windows were down.

And locked.

“Hey, Dean!” Sam tossed his jacket aside and the handful of the keys beside it. “I’m back! I’m a day late, tried to call you!”

A quick look around the small lower floor showed the dining room, living room, and some other space that had all been absorbed into Bobby’s library and office area were all empty. The sliver of kitchen attached to the back was dark. His hand on the banister, Sam swung up the steps, two at a time until he hit the second floor. This floor had about four rooms, two of which had enough room between the stacks of boxes and books for some beds they could use. The other two were comprised of a bathroom and more of Bobby’s organized clutter sprawling across back to back desks.

The room Dean had been using was at the end of the hall and the door was shut.

Looking at it with a frown, Sam started walking to it, ready to just open it without any cursory knock at all. It wasn’t as if Dean hadn’t heard him yelling up and down the house. Not to mention his gracefully thunderous ascent up the oldest wooden stairs on the planet.

It wasn’t locked.

Sam wasn’t sure if any of Bobby’s doors locked, but that was really besides the point. Dean could make any door shut up tighter than a bank vault if that was what he wanted to do. It took him a moment to adjust his eyes in the gray gloom of the room. There were three windows but the blinds had been pulled down just about as far as they could go. The air was stale and even warmer than it had been on the floor below. Confused, Sam stepped in, his gaze lingering over the empty but well made bed that sat almost in the room’s center.

His attention was drawn to the right, onto the broad old dresser. Dean’s bag was sitting there. It wasn’t unpacked, but everything in it was neatly stowed. He could see the shirts and pants that sat on top were in even orderly rows. All his other loose belongings were beside it on the glass topped table. Spare change in appropriate stacks. His phone a uniform length from that. His wallet the same.

It was about then that Sam realized Dean was in the room with him.

Walking slowly, he rounded the edge of the hospital cornered bunk, and saw the small strip of floor that lay between the bed and the wall under the windowsill. There was a sleeping bag rolled out, no blankets and no pillows. Just a few centimeters of packed old insulation between your bones and the unyielding scrape of the wood floor.

“Dean?”

Sam heard his own confusion make his voice sound more apprehensive than he had wanted it to be. To his slight horror, he had been completely wrong about how he had assumed he’d announced himself in every way possible before just walking right in here. Dean had been sleeping, and he was now awake. Breathing hard, utterly startled and most importantly, holding up a bowie knife in his right hand.

“It’s me! It’s me.” Sam held up his hands, unsure of exactly how else to relay the need for no concern. “I’m sorry, I should have—I guess I should have knocked…”

Dean slowly and stiffly sat up, the knife lowering slightly as he struggled up to his knees. He still hadn’t said anything. His eyes were watching Sam as if something unexpected could happen at any moment. If possible he appeared even paler, his eyes more strained, the fine tremors in his arm as he hefted the knife obvious and strange.

Sam looked back down at the crumpled sleeping bag and the shut up windows. He glanced down at the rumpled clothing Dean was wearing, none of that green shit he’d made sure to do away with but something oddly like it, canvas trousers that he had somewhere in his stuff, a neutral shirt and his boots tied tight even though he was laying around in a dark room. The smell of the room was musty with stale sweat, almost that funk that ended up coming off laundry if you left it for too long. But there were no piles of wash in here, just Dean and his sleeping bag. His brother’s face was starting a tangle of patchy beard, unnoticed and unattended. His eyes were red and constantly redirecting their gaze to everything around them. Although, what could have been catching Dean’s attention over and over again in a practically silent house made Sam’s nervousness deeper further.

“D-Dean... Have you...” Sam swallowed, seating himself on the bed and trying to keep eye contact with his quiet brother. “Have you left this room? Since I left?”

“Sure.” Dean said shortly.

Sam saw his gaze flicker past him to the bathroom.

“Yeah, besides the can, have you left this room?” Sam heard his voice get a little smaller at the end of that but he couldn’t help it.

Dean had finished the task of righting himself, tossing the knife limply on the comfortable unmade bed he wasn’t using. Instead of answering Sam, he flicked back the curtain, noting the Impala right where Sam parked it. Dean paused and looked further around it too, up the driveways and down and to either side.

“Dean.” Sam felt his voice go even more tense, his gut churning a little in an odd unsettled sensation. “Tell me, have you left this room once in fuckin’ four days—“

His brother did swing around then. Quick, much faster than Sam would have thought he’d been able to manage considering how long it took him to figure out how to get up off that creased filthy sleeping bag.

“I said yes.” Dean repeated in a hoarse voice.

Sam’s thoughts turned to the uncluttered cold dark kitchen below.

“You haven’t even eaten either.” Sam swallowed. “Have you?”

Dean’s expression of wary fatigue slowly shifted to something that looked close to some kind of infuriated embarrassment. Blinking back any more of his own uncertainty, Sam shifted on the bed and idly flipped the knife by its worn handle.

“You can’t go four days Dean.” Sam heard himself say angrily. Not apologetically. Not condescendingly. Not even kindly. “You can’t go four fucking days without eating food.”

Sam looked up to see Dean was finally looking at him square in the eyes now.

“I-I can do whatever the fuck it is I wanna do—“

“No Dean!” Sam stood up and got too close, using all the height he usually kept in check so he wouldn’t have to experience that sickening feeling when he saw the frustrated fury it caused in his older brother’s eyes. “You can’t start starving yourself just because you feel like it! You can’t shut yourself in some room until you rot!”

“What the hell are you goin’ do about it?” Dean asked him softly but somewhat honestly.

In another unchecked surge of his own, he pressed closer between the small gap between them. His arms gripped his brother’s exposed biceps, the skin cold and clammy despite the shallow humid heat that lay unmoving in the sealed up room. Sam didn’t know what he was doing. All he wanted was to somehow convey his thoughts, anger and noise into his brother by shaking him, yelling at him, maybe just clutching his arms so hard that purple bruises seeped into his white skin.

The thought of marking Dean up any further made Sam squeeze his eyes shut. In one final burst of frustration, he shoved his brother up hard against the chest of drawers. The furniture screeched as it yielded under both their weights. Panting, Sam slowly looked back up at his brother, wondering why Dean hadn’t wrenched his arms free of Sam’s grasp. Instead, he had them up, trapped in a half gesture of uncertain defense. Breathless and trembling, Dean was apprehensively waiting for something.

Sam blinked.

Dean thought Sam was going to hit him.

Trying to calm his own breathing, Sam slowly lowered his hands, letting them rest on Dean’s shoulders and then his chest. Dean wasn’t making a move to strike first. He wasn’t doing anything but standing there waiting for it.

“Dean, look, I’ll just leave you alone for a little while- a little while... “ Licking his dry lips, Sam heard himself talking. “I’m tired. The drive was really long.”

Sam made a fist in the collar of Dean’s shirt, his vision going gauzy with everything he wanted to say and couldn’t. A live breathing person in his hands he wanted to fix with one stupid profound good word or mind blowing proverb. But he couldn’t. His brother might as well have been one thousand miles away and not practically in his arms.

The hall way wasn’t very long, and Sam found his bed just as he’d left it.

He sat down hard, his elbows digging into his knees as he buried his face down into his palms. The heat and muffled sounds seemed safe to keep clutched so close, cupped between his locked fingers, hidden from everything and even himself. After a few moments he let his hot wet hands lower down between his knees, staring down hard at the strangely in focus planks of wood that lay between his boots.

A sound made him look up sharply towards his door. He had swung it closed behind him, but it was still open just one inch to the hallway beyond. Footsteps were gently retreating.

Sam slowly wiped the back of his hand across his damp eyes and then his mouth.

“I’m sorry Dean.”

Pushing his face down into his folded arms on his knees, he didn’t know what else to say.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another week went by before Sam really understood that Dean would only eat when someone else was.

He wasn’t sure why that simple logical process hadn’t come to him days ago, but for some reason in a house filled with three men on as different schedules as there were places for hands on a clock, it had become easy to miss. After that not so minor revelation, a few more came to make more sense too. Dean didn’t have a hesitancy to perform tasks. Instead, he had a maddeningly foreboding reluctance towards them that seemed to make him physically ill if he was in any mild way forced to do something on his own.

Sam tried to pretend he didn’t know what conditioning could do to a human mind. He’d read enough about it, saw some of it himself out in California. A small tour by a harried grad had showed a few friends the much less dramatic but equally as sinister tests made by the academics with caged animals deemed of value in the name of research. Sam wasn’t sure what Dean’s triggers had been, and even if he had had any. He didn’t know if his brother had been installed with command words, safe words or even words that would provoke him to violence.

All he could see was Dean waiting with strangely protectively crossed arms. A form of body language Sam didn’t see often on his brother. Sam watched the cereal pour down into the bowl with as much unease.

“Go ahead and eat it.” Bobby simply said.

That was all it seemed to take. Permission. Allowance. An order.

Sam stared intently down at his own food and tried not to hold his spoon too hard. The milk was a little sour but he didn’t care. He just wanted to put away this food that he had been given. Be as quiet as Dean.

“When yer done there, I want you to clean it up, and then head to the shower.”

Sam listened but didn’t raise his head to see Dean nod. Bobby understood. He got the whole thing. He knew Dean was stuck in some terrible place built out of pain and brain washing him down to some brutal routine he couldn’t shake himself loose from. Sam knew his brother wanted rid of it too. He could see him desperately straining against his own confines like some actual metal cage had been fitted to the exact size and width of his body.

Sam dropped his spoon. He couldn’t eat anymore.

“I’ll be in the shower.” Dean mumbled down at the bowl he was bringing to clean in the sink.

“You- you look pretty tired Dean,” Sam cleared his throat. “Why don’t you, you know, after your shower, try to get some sleep—"

“I- I’m not that tired.”

Sam saw a lot in that neatly typed manifesto about sleep deprivation and long nights. Short hours of sleeping under full fluorescents. Who knew what those people had done to him that wasn’t written in loving detail in their books? Making fists again, he wondered if he should order Dean to bed. His jaw tensed when he remembered that startled prepared look in his brother’s eyes. The defeated acceptance of the beating Sam was supposedly going to lay down on him for whatever reason there might be to do so. Much to his burning helplessness, he saw the bowl under his hand blur again as his eyes started to sting.

A hand slid onto his shoulder. Glancing up at Bobby, Sam sniffed once and quickly got his shit back under control. That’s all any of them needed now. Sam weeping into his cornflakes like he was a five year old without enough nap time of his own.

“After your shower, I want you to come down here and help me, Dean.” Bobby nodded.

“Yes, sir.” He muttered softly.

The bowl was already dry and sitting on the rack. Dean was walking slowly up the steps, his weight causing each plank to creak and groan until he reached the top. They both listened to the old plumbing twist and hiss to life.

Bobby poured himself another cup of coffee and took Dean’s seat.

“Thought I’d have him alphabetize my loose wild flower Latin field notes.”

Sam scooped up what was left of breakfast and forced himself to swallow it down.

“Shouldn’t take long.” Bobby grinned. “There’s only 2 or 3 hundred of the things.”

Sam felt himself returning the old guy’s smile at the swift and severe manner in which the chore would send Dean into a sleep so deep he might not be roused for hours. Feeling some kind of ease arrive with the small knowledge that at least one man here knew how to deal with this day by day, Sam sat back and allowed himself to let slip a few tight handfuls of his suffocating anxiety.

“Just give him some time to get back where he started.” Bobby nodded down to the steaming chipped mug in his hands. “It didn’t take overnight to get him like that. Won’t take one more to make the return trip.”

Sam nodded. He wanted to say thank you or show some kind of gratitude but he knew there would be no words coming out of his mouth that wouldn’t end up humiliating him. The tangle of fear and rage he was keeping reigned tightly in was probably enough to drive even someone like Bobby awkwardly from the table if he were to actually let any of it go. With a deep breath, he settled the worst of it deep down as far as it could go and prepared himself to talk as close to a normal person as he could.

"I’m- I’m going to get rid of that sleeping bag.” Sam said almost to himself. “Maybe he’ll start using the bed.”

“Give it another day.” Bobby told him. “Nice and slow, Sam.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another week passed.

Slow had been the key after all. As long as Dean was still eating and getting reasonable amounts of rest, everyone did their best to just stay out of his way. If Dean wanted to spend 12 hours in that weird room, they let him. If he wandered downstairs when called for food, they didn’t say anything when he left the water glass untouched and alone at his elbow.

Sam tried not to look at him too much. Of all the times he had privately prayed for the end of whatever idle chatter his brother used to fill in the blissful silences of the world, he now wished more than anything that Dean would just start talking again. About anything. Stupid jokes he’d heard a hundred times. A sound of disgust and a curt request to maybe try chewing with his mouth closed. An offer to just try their hand at some targets in the dark down by the hill.

It was strange to miss a person that was sitting right in front of you.

The first day Sam couldn’t find him in any part of the house, he was almost shocked back into his seat when Bobby pointed out the window towards the Impala.

“Told ‘em was sounding a little off.”

Hood up, and rags flung along her sides, Dean was buried under it doing exactly who knew what to an engine that Sam recalled ran fine enough for the Space Program. Maybe even a little better these days.

“I just pulled the starter around a little.” Bobby confessed. “Mighta jacked a few plugs too.”

The distraction worked for almost an entire afternoon until everything was fixed. But the afternoon kept going as the rest of the engine demanded a check over now that such mysterious ailments had befallen it. Sam watched it for a while until minutely observing any man perform very slow meticulous things to carburetors started to bore him as much as it ever had.

It was way past dark when Dean finally came in, covered in grease and sweat. Bobby and Sam exchanged a small look across the table when he walked right past them and climbed the stairs without a word.

Sam laughed softly out loud in stifled relief when the water came on above them.

“Just wait, just wait.” Bobby shrugged, but he was smiling too. “He might come back down here to ask if he can use the damn soap.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was just a day after that when Sam walked out on the front porch and found his brother sitting there alone watching the sun slip down. Dean even had a beer to celebrate. The shifting linger of pink and purple while the night rushed up and took it for good was definitely better than anything that was on TV.

“It’s my favorite time of day.”

Sam knew, but he didn’t feel like being a big know it all right at the moment.

There were a few minutes filled with nothing but the shrill steady cry of crickets until his brother surprised him with not only more discussion, but an actual question.

“How’d you know?” Dean leaned back as he took a drink.

Easing back into a rickety old rocking chair, Sam had been waiting for the question to come eventually. He’d framed reasonable answers in different variations over and over in his head but none of them were very satisfying. Even to himself. He pushed one bare foot up against the porch railing to tip his seat back as far as it could go on the tip of its arcs. Watching the sky, Dean started rolling his green beer bottle along the grain of the weathered planks. The smooth grinding sound of glass on grit leaving them to nothing but the far off call of the bugs and birds doing their thing as the sun made to settle for the evening.

“How did you know that it would work?”

Dean was really asking two questions. How the hell did he know that any of it would work and how had Sam found him at all? The talisman. All that desert. The small detail that a wandering deity wasn’t the only thing carefully aware of his shrouded progress.

“It was like…” Sam felt a wry smile coming to his face when he felt particularly proud of himself with the creation of a decent metaphor. “… hearing your favorite song struck between two stations.”

Barely there, each other word strained out through the jumbled signals busy trying to bury it under its own noise. But it was still a sound you’d never forget no matter what had been done to it. Sam knew it was something of an art to explain what happened in his head to anyone else who literally couldn’t be there. He didn’t expect anyone, including his brother, to understand a single word of it.

“So what?” Dean asked him. “Yer smarter than some demigod now?”

Sam smiled at the sound of his brother’s exasperation that got all mixed up with a hesitant pride.

Dean snorted before he tipped his bottle back again. “Didn’t think old Noqoìlpi had it in ‘em to be bamboozled twice in one millennia.”

“Thought you didn’t think much of all that fancy entitlement based on well, a couple of pure blood lines?”

Gods and their ilk were a lot like some of the old royal family lineages in one way or another. Sam sighed, looking down at his own half finished bottle. Some beings were just granted with what they had because of fate. There were no votes, no committees, not even one solemn objective judge to legislate the powers that roamed strong and treacherous across and through the world’s uneven surfaces.

Sam didn’t really feel like talking about all the tricks, slips, deft finger tips and the century old act and mastery of distraction. All performance magic was much more elaborate than any of the down to Earth real stuff anyway. Your command of the audience was more important than your grip on just what exactly you were trying to make disappear right before their eyes.

Magic, in any of its incarnations had never held anything but a professional interest for him. It only had to meet its mark and do its job, just like any other weapon that was carefully minded under his care. Whether or not he could perform it with the same skill as the men that had their faces and names looming in lights hundreds of feet over the glittering Vegas strip was inconsequential to him. A delighted crowd on a street corner clapping and waiting to be fooled, or a hushed desert night with a phantom breathing the sand to stir at your crossed legs. Some well earned gas money or sparing a soul’s ruination. It was sometimes profoundly strange how the skill level required to do either was practically the same.

Sighing, Sam tipped his chair back again, grateful that his brother’s questions about it had seemed to ebb to a halt. What Sam really wanted to talk about was what exactly they should do now. Trouble was he was not sure how he should go about it. Working it all out in his head for the hundredth time, figuring how to choose his words in the perfect mosaic that wouldn’t lead to Dean going quiet and staying that way. Dean refusing to even sit with him like this on the porch. Dean shutting himself back up in that room of his.

But Sam was really worried about something else. It was about saying just the right thing that would prevent Dean from simply not being there in the morning. His things, the car and every other slight reminder of his existence would be cleaned up, packed away and gone. Sam sat back and studied the dark twilight sky slowly marbling with the pink twist and curl of the clouds.

Oddly enough, it seemed his brother was thinking along the same lines.

“Think Keens made it out?” Dean murmured, his words half lost into his bottle.

“Dunno.” Sam shrugged as he shook his head. “If he did, he’d better be running as fast as he can.”

“Or hiding somewhere deep.” Dean added thoughtfully.

“Hey, Dean?” Sam started yanking at the frayed loose threads that were slowly disintegrating the tops of his jeans. He heard his voice start to waver but he didn’t care. “If- If he tries to find you again, I swear, I won’t let—“

“Bobby said he saw some wild turkey out back yesterday.”

“Huh?” Sam blinked, completely and utterly tossed off his tracks. “T-turkeys?”

“Yup, he saw two or three of them wandering the back south line.”

Very much against his will, Sam was forced to the vague fond boyhood memories of offing the gigantic birds. They’d sit for hours freezing to death in the poorly made pine bluffs he and his brother created in their often unattended sojourns into the fold of the autumn forests that surrounded the place. There had been something childishly exhilarating about shooting the holy hell out of something that had no possibility whatsoever of disemboweling you alive if you happened to fail. The plucking and gutting hadn’t been half as fun, but cooking and eating it all by themselves over some fire in the middle of nowhere had always felt like one of the best things ever.

Spitting out buckshot between bites. Passing back and forth the stolen flask of Bobby’s moonshine. Sleeping out there with nothing but a few blankets and the crackling embers.

“I say we get up, around 4AM-ish,” Dean half smiled at him, tired but genuine, the kind that reached all the way to his eyes when lately nothing had even come close. “See if we can’t bag an early Thanksgiving.”

Sam sighed, tired at the thought already.

“Do we have to go so early?”

”When do you wanna go?”

“How about 4:15?” Sam tried hopefully.

His brother stared at him for a second before his smile deepened into something more.

It was a real laugh that came then, straight up from the bottom where Sam had seen nothing but stifled words and a steadfast terrible hold that was still keeping him somewhere out there in that desert. But the laugh kept coming, loud and careless, hard enough to make Dean hold a hand down over his belly. It was the kind that made Sam start laughing back just because he couldn’t help it.

Pulling the back of his hand over one watering eye he wasn’t even quite sure what the hell it was that he was laughing about anyway.

It didn’t even matter. The sum of things. The entirety of it all. His seat on an old run down porch and the fate of a couple stupid gobblers that had no idea that tonight was the last evening they’d spend picking the tall grass for insects. For the first time in a long time, for a few quiet moments out here in the cool clear twilight, everything seemed like it would be fine.

For just this one night, that was all Sam needed.

 

 

 

the end


End file.
